A 

0 
0 
0 

6 
0 
4 

1 
6 

1 

^ 

0 

^-VMCi^' 


THE  COMDIXIPN  QF  LABOR 


HENRY  GEORGE 


)rnia 
al 

J 


UCSB  LfB'RARV 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/conditionoflaborOOgeoriala 


TO  THOUGHTFUL  MEN  AND  WOMEN. 


Believing  that  this  book  contains  truths  which 
deeply  concern  you,  we  have  undertaken  its  hand  to 
hand  circulation.  Since  on  your  decision  our  welfare 
depends,  we  hope  a  careful  consideration  of  its  argu- 
ments will  lead  you  to  conclusions  calculated  to  ad- 
vance alike  your  own  interests  and  those  of  our  coun  - 
try.  If  this  book  advocates  error,  you  should  oppose 
it ;  if  it  tells  truths,  even  though  they  seem  unpalata- 
ble, you  should  aid  its  circulation.  In  either  case,  the 
truth  can  lose  nothing  by  full,  free  and  fair  discussion  ; 
hence,  we  confidently  ask  you,  after  reading,  to  talk 
over  its  arguments  with  your  neighbors,  and  assist  us 
in  circulating  the  bo'ok  from  hand  to  hand  till  this 
grave  wrong  is  righted. 


HAND  TO  HAND  CLUB. 

pRjESid:^nt. 

Warrbn  Worth  Bailey Chicago,  111. 

vic:b^-prje;sid:e^nts. 

Wm.  IvLOyd  Garrison Boston,  Mass. 

Sidney    M.  Owen Minneapolis,  Minn. 

Jesse  F.  Murphy Olympia,  Wash. 

Hon.  Tom  ly.  Johnson Cleveland,  Ohio. 

Hon.  Jerry  Simpson   ....  Medicine  Lodge,  Kan. 

Hon.  L.  W.  Hoch Adrian,  Mich. 

A.  B.  Farquhar York,  Pennsylvania. 

G^NnRAh    SECRETARY. 

W.  J.  Atkinson 2147  3d  Ave.,  New  York. 


HAND  TO  HAND  CLUB. 


Believing  that  correct  thought  must  precede  right 
action,  the  Hand  to  Hand  Club  is  endeavoring  to 
arouse  and  stimulate  discussion  of  the  questions  now 
pressing  for  solution,  ' '  which  not  to  answer  is  to  be  de- 
stroyed." Its  efforts  are  specially  directed  to  circula- 
ting Henry  George's  immortal  work,  "Protection  or 
Free  Trade?"  This  is  acknowledged  to  be  the  most 
thorough,  as  it  is  the  most  entertaining,  presentation 
of  all  sides  of  the  Tariff  question.  Our  own  216-page 
edition  (retailing  at  25  cents)  is  supplied  in  lots  of  10 
or  more  for  ten  cents  per  copy,  postpaid.  The  Con- 
gressional Record  edition,  in  which  the  same  book  in 
smaller  type  is  compressed  into  59  pages,  is  mailed  for 
ONE  CENT  per  copy  ;  or  your  Congressman  will 
probably  furnish  it  free. 

We  have  obtained  subscriptions  for  over  315,000 
copies  of  our  216-page  edition,  and  have  actually 
printed  and  paid  for  100,000. 

The  Congressional  Record  edition  is  over  1,000,000 
copies,  and  will  be  over  2,000,000. 

Dues  are  50  cents  a  year,  for  which  members  re- 
ceive * 

1.  "  TAX  RBPORM,''  monthly,  for  one  year. 

2.  Five  copies  of  the  216-page  edition  of  "  Pro- 
tection or  Free  Trade  ?  " 

3.  DISCOUNTS,  ranging  from  10  to  50  per  cent, 
from  publisher's  prices  on  any  book:  in  the  market. 

Members  in  ordering  books  are  asked  to  give 
names  of  authors  and  publishers  in  full  as  well  as 
titles. 

Remit  publisher's  price,  less  10  per  cent.,  and 
any  additional  discount  will  be  returned. 

All  orders  must  be  accompanied  by  the  cash. 

We  want  a  live  local  secretary  in  every  town  and 
hamlet  in  America.  If  you  cannot  serve  yourself, 
recommend  some  neighbor  who  will  do  the  work. 

Address  W.   J.    ATKINSON, 

Secretary  Hand  to  Hand  Club, 

2147  Third  Ave.,  New  York. 


A    PERPLEXED    PHILOSOPHER. 

Being  an  examination  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  various  ut- 
terances on  the  Land  Question,  with  some  incidental  refer- 
ence to  bis  synthetic  philosophy.      By  HENRY  GMORGE. 

i3mo,  320  pages,  Cloth,  Gold  Stamp.  $1.00  ;  Paper,  50  cents. 


OTHER  WORKS  BY  HENRY  GEORGE. 

PROGRESS    AND    POVERTY. 

An  inquiry  into  the  cause  of  industrial  depressions,  and  of 

increase  of  want  with  increase  of  wealth:    The  remedy. 

Thirteen  years  of  criticism  and  controversy  have  failed  to  shake  the 
position  of  this  famous  work,  and  the  steady  growth  of  its  influence  is  more 
and  more  justifying  those  who  hailed  it  as  the  most  important  book  of  the 
century.    Cloth,  $i,co;  Paper,  50c. 

SOCIAL    PROBLEMS. 

My  endeavor  has  been  to  present  the  momentous  social  problems  of  our 
time,  unincumbered  by  technicalities,  and  without  that  abstract  reasoning 
which  some  of  the  principles  of  Political  Economy  require  for  thorough  ex- 
planation.— Extract  from  Author's  Preface.    Cloth,  fi. 00;  Paper,  50c. 

PROTECTION    OR    FREE    TRADE? 

An  examination  of  the  tariff  question,   with  especial  regard 
to  the  interests  of  labor. 

The  most  thorough  and  readable  examination  of  the  tariff  question  ever 
made.  The  great  influence  it  is  exerting  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  besides 
its  issues  in  other  languages,  no  less  than  one  million  five  hundred  thou.=aiid 
copies  have  been  issued  in  various  forms  in  English  alone,  between  its  first 
publication  in  1886  and  November,  1892.    Cloth,  |i.oo;  Paper,  50c. 

THE    LAND    QUESTION 

What  it  involves  and  how  alone  it  can  be  settled. 

First  published  in  i88r,  under  the  title  of  "  The  Irish  Land  Question," 
but  dealing,  as  it  does,  with  matters  of  universal  and  permanent  import- 
ance, it  still  retains  its  value  and  popularity.    Paper,  20c. 

PROPERTY    IN    LAND. 

A  passage-at-arms  between  the  Duke  of  Argyll  and 

Henry  George. 

A  reprint  of  two  articles  from  the  London  Nineteenth  Century,  One  bv 
the  Duke  of  Argyll,  entitled  "The  Prophet  of  San  Francisco."  attacking 
Mr.  George  and  his  doctrines  ;  and  the  other,  a  reply  by  Mr.  George,  enti- 
tled "  The  Reduction  to  Iniquity."     Paper,  20c. 

THE    CONDITION    OF    LABOR. 

An  Open  Letter  to  Pope  Leo  XIII.    With  Encyclical  Letter  of 

Pope  Leo  XIII.  on  the  condition  of  labor. 

Cloth.  75c.;  Paper,  30c.;  Hand  to  Hand  Club  edition,  flexible  covers,  |i  00. 

"  Progress  aud  Poverty  "  and  "  Social  Problems"  are  also 
published  in  smaller  type,  paper  covers,  at  35c.  Liberal  di.s- 
counts  in  quantities. 

TAX    REFORM    PUBLISHING    CO. 

CHESTERTOWN,   MARYLAND. 

"  Tax  Reform,"  published  monthly,  at  Chestertown, 
Md.,  for  50  cents  a  year,  advocates  the  Single  Tax,  as  proposed 
by  Henrj'  George.  Circulation,  February,  1893,  50,000  copies 
per  issue.     Send  for  sample  copy  free. 


Readers  are  requested  to  write  their  names  and 
addresses  below,  and  state  whether  or  not  they 
agree  with  the  author. 


ADDRESS.  REMARKS. 


THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR 


AN 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIIL 


HENRY  GEORGE 


"With  Encyclical  Letter  of  Pope  Leo  Xni. 
ON  THE  Condition  of  Labor 


NEW  YORK 

CHAELES  L.  WEBSTEK  &  COMPANY 

1893 


Copyright,  i88i, 

BY 

HENRY  GEORGE 


THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR 


An  Open  Letter  to  Pope  Leo  XIIL 


To  Pope  Leo  XIII. 

Your  Holiness : 

I  have  read  with  care  your  Encyclical  letter 
on  the  condition  of  labor,  addressed,  through  the 
Patriarchs,  Primates,  Archbishops  and  Bishops  of  your 
faith,  to  the  Christian  "World. 

Since  its  most  strikingly  pronounced  condemnations 
are  directed  against  a  theory  that  we  who  hold  it 
know  to  be  deserving  of  your  support,  I  ask  permission 
to  lay  before  your  Holiness  the  grounds  of  our  belief, 
and  to  set  forth  some  considerations  that  you  have 
unfortunately  overlooked.  The  momentous  serious- 
ness of  the  facts  you  refer  to,  the  poverty,  suffering 
and  seething  discontent  that  pervade  the  Christian 
world,  the  danger  that  passion  may  lead  ignorance  in 
a  blind  struggle  against  social  conditions  rapidly  be- 
coming intolerable,  are  my  justification. 

I. 

Our  postulates  are  all  stated  or  implied  in  your 
Encyclical.     They  are  the  primary  perceptions   of 


4  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOE. 

human  reason,  the  fundamental  teachings  of  the 
Christian  faith  : 

We  hold :  That— 

This  world  is  the  creation  of  God. 

The  men  brought  into  it  for  the  brief  period  of  their 
earthly  lives  are  the  equal  creatures  of  His  bounty, 
the  equal  subjects  of  His  provident  care. 

By  his  constitution  man  is  beset  by  physical  wants, 
on  the  satisfaction  of  which  depend  not  only  the 
maintenance  of  his  physical  life  but  also  the  develop- 
ment of  his  intellectual  and  spiritual  life. 

God  has  made  the  satisfaction  of  these  wants 
dependent  on  man's  own  exertions,  giving  him  the 
power  and  laying  on  him  the  injunction  to  labor — a 
power  that  of  itself  raises  him  far  above  the  brute, 
since  we  may  reverently  say  thaf  it  enables  him  to 
become  as  it  were  a  helper  in  the  creative  work. 

God  has  not  put  on  man  the  task  of  making  bricks 
without  straw.  With  the  need  for  labor  and  the  power 
to  labor  He  has  also  given  to  man  the  material  for 
labor.  This  material  is  land— man  physically  being 
a  land  animal,  who  can  live  only  on  and  from  land, 
and  can  use  other  elements,  such  as  air,  sunshine  and 
water,  only  by  the  use  of  land. 

Being  the  equal  creatures  of  the  Creator,  equally 
entitled  under  His  providence  to  live  their  lives  and 
satisfy  their  needs,  men  are  equally  entitled  to  the  use 
of  land,  and  any  adjustment  that  denies  this  equal 
use  of  land  is  morally  wrong. 

As  to  the  right  of  ownership,  we  hold  :  That — 
Beinor  created   individuals,  with  individual  wants 
and  powers,  men  are  individuilly  entitled  (subject  of 


OPEN   LETTER   TO   POPE    LEO   XIH.  5 

course  to  the  moral  obligations  that  arise  from  such  re- 
lations as  that  of  the  family)  to  the  use  of  their  own 
powers  and  the  enjoyment  of  the  results. 

There  thus  arises,  anterior  to  human  law,  and 
deriving  its  validity  from  the  law  of  God,  a  right  of 
private  ownership  in  things  produced  by  labor — a  right 
that  the  possessor  may  transfer,  but  of  which  to  de- 
prive him  without  his  will  is  theft. 

This  right  of  property,  originating  in  the  right  of 
the  individual  to  himself,  is  the  only  full  and  complete 
right  of  property.  It  attaches  to  things  produced  by 
labor,  but  cannot  attach  to  things  created  by  God. 

Thus,  if  a  man  take  a  fish  from  the  ocean  he  acquires 
a  right  of  property  in  that  fish,  which  exclusive  right 
he  may  transfer  by  sale  or  gift.  But  he  cannot  obtain 
a  similar  right  of  property  in  the  ocean,  so  that  he 
may  sell  it  or  give  it  or  forbid  others  to  use  it. 

Or,  if  he  set  up  a  windmill  he  acquires  a  right  of 
property  in  the  things  such  use  of  wind  enables  him 
to  produce.  But  he  cannot  claim  a  right  of  property 
in  the  wind  itself,  so  that  he  may  sell  it  or  forbid 
others  to  use  it. 

Or,  if  he  cultivate  grain  he  acquires  a  right  of  prop- 
erty in  the  grain  his  labor  brings  forth.  But  he  cannot 
obtain  a  similar  right  of  property  in  the  sun  which 
ripened  it  or  the  soil  on  which  it  grew.  For  these 
things  are  of  the  continuing  gifts  of  God  to  all  genera- 
tions of  men,  which  all  may  use,  but  none  may  claim 
as  his  alone. 

To  attach  to  things  created  by  God  the  same  right  of 
private  ownership  that  justly  attaches  to  things  pro- 
duced by  labor  is  to  impair  and  deny  the  true  rights 
of  property.     For  a  man  who  out  of  the  proceeds  of 


6  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

his  labor  is  obliged  to  pay  another  man  for  the  use  of 
ocean  or  air  or  sunshine  or  soil,  all  of  which  are  to 
men  involved  in  the  single  term  land,  is  in  this  de- 
prived of  his  rightful  property  and  thus  robbed. 

As  to  the  use  of  land,  we  hold  :  That — 
While  the  right  of  ownership  that  justly  attaches  to 
things  produced  by  labor  cannot  attach  to  land,  there 
may  attach  to  land  a  right  of  possession.  As  your 
Holiness  says,  "  God  has  not  granted  the  earth  to  man- 
kind in  general  in  the  sense  that  all  without  distinction 
can  deal  with  it  as  they  please,"  and  regulations 
necessary  for  its  best  use  may  be  fixed  by  human  laws. 
But  such  regulations  must  conform  to  the  moral  law 
— must  secure  to  all  equal  participation  in  the  advan- 
tages of  God's  general  bounty.  The  principle  is  the 
same  as  where  a  human  father  leaves  property  equally 
to  a  number  of  children.  Some  of  the  things  thus 
left  may  be  incapable  of  common  use  or  of  specific 
division.  Such  things  may  properly  be  assigned  to 
some  of  the  children,  but  only  under  condition  that 
the  equality  of  benefit  among  them  all  be  preserved. 

In  the  rudest  social  state,  while  industry  consists  in 
hunting,  fishing,  and  gathering  the  spontaneous  fruits 
of  the  earth,  private  possession  of  land  is  not  necessary. 
But  as  men  begin  to  cultivate  the  ground  and  expend 
their  labor  in  permanent  works,  private  possession  of 
the  land  on  which  Jabor  is  thus  expended  is  needed  to 
secure  the  right  of  pro])erty  in  the  products  of  labor. 
For  who  would  sow  if  not  assured  of  the  exclusive 
possession  needed  to  enable  him  to  reaj)  ?  who  would 
attach  costly  works  to  the  soil  without  such  exclusive 


OPEN    LETTER   TO    POPE    LEO   XIII.  7 

possession  of  the  soil  as  would  enable  him  to  secure 
the  benefit? 

This  right  of  private  possession  in  things  created  by 
God  is  however  very  different  from  the  right  of  private 
ownership  in  things  produced  by  labor.  The  one  is 
limited,  the  other  unlimited,  save  in  cases  when  the 
dictate  of  self-preservation  terminates  all  other  rights. 
The  purpose  of  the  one,  the  exclusive  possession  of 
land,  is  merely  to  secure  the  other,  the  exclusive 
ownership  of  the  products  of  labor ;  and  it  can  never 
rightfully  be  carried  so  far  as  to  impair  or  deny  this. 
While  anyone  may  hold  exclusive  possession  of  land  so 
far  as  it  does  not  interfere  with  the  equal  rights  of 
others,  he  can  rightfully  hold  it  no  further. 

Thus  Cain  and  Abel,  were  there  only  two  men  on 
earth,  might  by  agreement  divide  the  earth  between 
them.  Under  this  compact  each  might  claim  exclusive 
right  to  his  share  as  against  the  other.  But  neither 
could  rightfully  continue  such  claim  against  the  next 
man  born.  For  since  no  one  comes  into  the  world 
without  God's  permission,  his  presence  attests  his 
equal  right  to  the  use  of  God's  bounty.  For  them  to 
refuse  him  any  use  of  the  earth  which  they  had 
divided  between  them  would  therefore  be  for  them  to 
commit  murder.  And  for  them  to  refuse  him  any 
use  of  the  earth,  unless  by  laboring  for  them  or  by 
giving  them  part  of  the  products  of  his  labor  he  bought 
it  of  them,  would  be  for  them  to  commit  theft. 

God's  laws  do  not  change.  Though  their  applica- 
tions may  alter  with  altering  conditions,  the  same 
principles  of  right  and  wrong  that  hold  when  men 
are  few  and  industry  is  rude  also  hold  amid  teeming 


8  THE    CONDITION    OF   LABOE. 

populations  and  complex  industries.  In  our  cities  of 
millions  and  our  states  of  scores  of  millions,  in  a 
civilization  where  the  division  of  labor  has  gone  so 
far  that  large  numbers  are  hardlj  conscious  that  they 
are  land  users,  it  still  remains  true  that  we  are  all 
land  animals  and  can  live  only  on  land,  and  that  land 
is  God's  bounty  to  all,  of  which  no  one  can  be 
deprived  without  being  murdered,  and  for  which  no 
one  can  be  compelled  to  pay  another  without  being 
robbed.  But  even  in  a  state  of  society  where  the 
elaboration  of  industry  and  the  increase  of  permanent 
improvements  have  made  the  need  for  private  posses- 
sion of  land  widespread,  there  is  no  difficulty  in 
conforming  individual  possession  with  the  equal  right 
to  land.  For  as  soon  as  any  piece  of  land  will  yield 
to  the  possessor  a  larger  return  than  is  had  by  similar 
labor  on  other  land  a  value  attaches  to  it  which  is 
shown  when  it  is  sold  or  rented.  Thus,  the  value  of 
the  land  itself,  irrespective  of  the  value  of  any 
improvements  in  or  on  it,  always  indicates  the  precise 
value  of  the  benefit  to  which  all  are  entitled  in  its 
use,  as  distinguished  from  the  value  which  as  producer 
or  successor  of  a  producer  belongs  to  the  possessor  in 
individual  right. 

To  combine  the  advantages  of  private  possession 
with  the  justice  of  common  ownership  it  is  only 
necessary  therefore  to  take  for  common  uses  what 
value  attaches  to  land  irrespective  of  any  exertion  of 
labor  on  it.  The  principle  is  the  same  as  in  the  case 
referred  to,  where  a  human  father  leaves  equally  to  his 
children  things  not  susceptible  of  specific  division  or 
common  use.  In  that  case  such  things  would  be  sold 
or  rented  and  the  value  equally  applied. 


OPEN   LETTEB  TO   POPE   LEO  XHI.  9 

It  is  on  tMs  common  sense  principle  that  we,  who 
term  ourselves  single  tax  men,  would  have  the  com- 
munity act. 

We  do  not  propose  to  assert  equal  rights  to  land  by 
keeping  land  common,  letting  any  one  use  any  part 
of  it  at  any  time.  We  do  not  propose  the  task, 
impossible  in  the  present  state  of  society,  of  dividing 
land  in  equal  shares ;  still  less  the  yet  more  impossible 
task  of  keeping  it  so  divided. 

We  propose,  leaving  land  in  the  private  possession 
of  individuals,  with  full  liberty  on  their  part  to 
give,  sell  or  bequeath  it,  simply  to  levy  on  it  for  public 
uses  a  tax  that  shall  equal  the  annual  value  of  the  land 
itself,  irrespective  of  the  use  made  of  it  or  the 
improvements  on  it.  And  since  this  would  provide 
amply  for  the  need  of  public  revenues,  we  would 
accompany  this  tax  on  land  values  with  the  repeal  of 
all  taxes  now  levied  on  the  products  and  processes  of 
industry — which  taxes,  since  they  take  from  the 
earnings  of  labor,  we  hold  to  be  infringements  of  the 
right  of  property. 

This  we  propose,  not  as  a  cunning  device  of  human 
ingenuity,  but  as  a  conforming  of  human  regulations 
to  the  will  of  God. 

God  cannot  contradict  himself  nor  impose  on  his 
creatures  laws  that  clash. 

If  it  be  God's  command  to  men  that  they  should 
not  steal — that  is  to  say,  that  they  should  respect  the 
right  of  property  which  each  one  has  in  the  fruits  of 
his  labor  ; 

And  if  He  be  also  the  Father  of  all  men,  who  in  His 
common  bounty  has  intended  all  to  have  equal 
opportunities  for  sharing ; 


10  THE   CONDITION   OF    LABOR. 

Then,  in  any  possible  stage  of  civilization,  how- 
ever elaborate,  there  must  be  some  way  in  which 
the  exclusive  right  to  the  products  of  industry  may  be 
reconciled  with  the  equal  right  to  land. 

If  the  Almighty  be  consistent  with  Himself,  it 
cannot  be,  as  say  those  socialists  referred  to  by  you, 
that  in  order  to  secure  the  equal  participation  of  men 
in  the  opportunities  of  life  and  labor  we  must  ignore 
the  right  of  private  property.  Nor  yet  can  it  be,  as 
you  yourself  in  the  Encyclical  seem  to  argue,  that 
to  secure  the  right  of  private  property  we  must 
ignore  the  equality  of  right  in  the  opportunities  of 
life  and  labor.  To  say  the  one  thing  or  the  other 
is  equally  to  deny  the  harmony  of  God's  laws. 

But,  the  private  possession  of  land,  subject  to  the 
payment  to  the  community  of  the  value  of  any  special 
advantage  thus  given  to  the  individual,  satisfies  both 
laws,  securing  to  all  equal  participation  in  the  bounty 
of  the  Creator  and  to  each  the  full  ownership  of  the 
products  of  his  labor. 

Kor  do  we  hesitate  to  say  that  this  way  of  securing 
the  equal  right  to  the  bounty  of  the  Creator  and  the 
exclusive  right  to  the  products  of  labor  is  the  way 
intended  by  God  for  raising  public  revenues.  For  wo 
are  not  atheists,  who  deny  God ;  nor  semi-atheists, 
who  deny  that  He  has  any  concern  in  politics  and 
legislation. 

It  is  true  as  you  say — a  salutary  truth  too  often 
forgotten — that  "  man  is  older  than  the  state,  and  he 
holds  the  right  of  providing  for  the  life  of  his  body 
prior  to  the  formation  of  any  state."  Yet,  as  you  too 
perceive,  it  is  also  true  that  the  state  is  in  the  divinely 


OPEN   LETTER   TO    POPE    LEO   XIIL  11 

appointed  order.  For  He  who  foresaw  all  things  and 
provided  for  all  things,  foresaw  and  provided  that 
with  the  increase  of  population  and  the  development 
of  industry  the  organization  of  human  society  into 
states  or  governments  would  become  both  expedient 
and  necessary. 

No  sooner  does  the  state  arise  than,  as  we  all  know, 
it  needs  revenues.  This  need  for  revenues  is  small 
at  first,  while  population  is  sparse,  industry  rude  and 
the  functions  of  the  state  few  and  simple.  But  with 
growth  of  population  and  advance  of  civilization  the 
functions  of  the  state  increase  and  larger  and  larger 
revenues  are  needed. 

Now,  He  that  made  the  world  and  placed  man  in 
it,  He  that  preordained  civilization  as  the  means 
whereby  man  might  rise  to  higher  powders  and  become 
more  and  more  conscious  of  the  works  of  his  Creator, 
must  have  foreseen  this  increasing  need  for  state 
revenues  and  have  made  provision  for  it.  That  is  to 
say  :  The  increasing  need  for  public  revenues  with 
social  advance,  being  a  natural,  God-ordained  need, 
there  must  be  a  right  w^ay  of  raising  them — some  way 
that  we  can  truly  say  is  the  way  intended  by  God. 
Tt  is  clear  that  this  right  way  of  raising  public  revenues 
must  accord  with  the  moral  law. 

Hence : 

It  must  not  take  from  individuals  what  rightfully 
belongs  to  individuals. 

It  must  not  give  some  an  advantage  over  others, 
as  by  increasing  the  prices  of  what  some  have  to  sell 
and  others  must  buy. 

It  must  not  lead  men  into  temptation,  by  requiring 


12  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOK. 

trivial  oaths,  by  making  it  profitable  to  lie,  to  swear 
falsely,  to  bribe  or  to  take  bribes. 

It  must  not  confuse  the  distinctions  of  right  and 
wrong,  and  weaken  the  sanctions  of  religion  and  the 
state  by  creating  crimes  that  are  not  sins,  and  punish- 
ing men  for  doing  what  in  itself  they  have  an  un- 
doubted right  to  do. 

It  must  not  repress  industry.  It  must  not  check 
commerce.  It  must  not  punish  thrift.  It  must  offer 
no  impediment  to  the  largest  production  and  the 
fairest  division  of  wealth. 

Let  me  ask  your  Holiness  to  consider  the  taxes  on 
the  processes  and  products  of  industry  by  which 
through  the  civilized  world  public  revenues  are 
collected — the  octroi  duties  that  surround  Italian 
cities  with  barriers ;  the  monstrous  customs  duties 
that  hamper  intercourse  between  so-called  Christian 
states;  the  taxes  on  occupations,  on  earnings,  on 
investments,  on  the  building  of  houses,  on  the  culti- 
vation of  fields,  on  industry  and  thrift  in  all  forms. 
Can  these  be  the  ways  God  has  intended  that  govern- 
ments should  raise  the  means  they  need  'i  Have  any 
of  them  the  characteristics  indispensable  in  any  plan 
we  can  deem  a  right  one  ? 

All  these  taxes  violate  the  moral  law.  They  take 
by  force  what  belongs  to  the  individual  alone ;  they 
give  to  the  unscrupulous  an  advantage  over  the 
scrupulous ;  they  have  the  efiect,  nay  are  largely  in- 
tended, to  increase  the  price  of  what  some  have  to 
sell  and  others  must  buy;  they  corrupt  government; 
they  make  oaths  a  mockery ;  they  shackle  commerce ; 
they  fine  industry  and  thrift ;  they  lessen  the  wealth 


OPEN   LETTER   TO    POPE    LEO   XIII.  13 

that  men  might  enjoy,  and  enrich  some  by  impoverish- 
ing others. 

Yet  what  most  strikingly  shows  how  opposed  to 
Christianity  is  this  system  of  raising  public  revenues 
is  its  influence  on  thought. 

Christianity  teaches  us  that  all  men  are  brethren ; 
that  their  true  interests  are  harmonious,  not  an- 
tagonistic. It  gives  us,  as  the  golden  rule  of  life,  that 
we  should  do  to  others  as  we  would  have  others  do 
to  us.  But  out  of  the  system  of  taxing  the  products 
and  processes  of  labor,  and  out  of  its  effects  m  increas- 
ing the  price  of  what  some  have  to  sell  and  others 
must  buy,  has  grown  the  theory  of  "  protection," 
which  denies  this  gospel,  which  holds  Christ  ignorant 
of  political  economy  and  proclaims  laws  of  national 
well-being  utterly  at  variance  with  His  teachmg.  This 
theory  sanctifies  national  hatreds;  it  inculcates  a 
universal  war  of  hostile  tariffs;  it  teaches  peoples 
that  their  prosperity  lies  in  imposing  on  the  pro- 
ductions of  other  peoples  restrictions  they  do  not  wish 
imposed  on  their  own ;  and  instead  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  man's  brotherhood  it  makes  injury  of 
foreigners  a  civic  virtue. 

"  By  their  fruits  you  shall  know  them."  Can  any- 
thing more  clearly  show  that  to  tax  the  products  and 
processes  of  industry  is  not  the  way  God  intended 
public  revenues  to  be  raised  ? 

But  to  consider  what  we  propose — the  raising  of 
pubHc  revenues  by  a  single  tax  on  the  value  of  land 
irrespective  of  improvements — is  to  see  that  in  all 
respects  this  does  conform  to  the  moral  law. 

Let  me  ask  your  Holiness  to  keep  in  mind  that  the 
value  we  propose  to  tax,  the  value  of  land  irrespective 


14  tllfi   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

of  improvements,  does  not  come  from  any  exertion 
of  labor  or  investment  of  capital  on  or  in  it — the 
values  produced  in  this  way  being  values  of  improve- 
ment which  we  would  exempt.  The  value  of  land 
irrespective  of  improvement  is  the  value  that  attaches 
to  land  by  reason  of  increasing  population  and  social 
progress.  This  is  a  value  that  always  goes  to  the 
owner  as  owner,  and  never  does  and  never  can  go  to 
the  user ;  for  if  the  user  be  a  different  person  from  the 
owner  he  must  always  pay  the  owner  for  it  in  rent  or 
in  purchase  money ;  while  if  the  user  be  also  the 
owner,  it  is  as  owner,  not  as  user,  that  he  receives  it, 
and  by  selling  or  renting  the  land  he  can,  as  owner, 
continue  to  receive  it  after  he  ceases  to  be  a  user. 

Thus,  taxes  on  land  irrespective  of  improvement  can- 
not lessen  the  rewards  of  industry,  nor  add  to  prices,* 

*As  to  this  point  it  may  be  well  to  add  that  all  economists  are 
agreed  that  taxes  on  land  values  irrespective  of  improvement  or 
use — or  what  in  the  terminology  of  Political  Economy  is  styled 
rent,  a  term  distinguished  from  the  ordinary  use  of  the  word  rent 
by  being  applied  solely  to  payments  for  the  use  of  land  itself — 
must  be  paid  by  the  owner  and  cannot  be  shifted  by  him  on  the 
user.  To  explain  in  another  way  the  reason  given  in  the  text 
Price  is  not  determined  by  the  will  of  the  seller  or  tlje  will  of  the 
buyer,  but  by  the  equation  of  demand  and  supply,  and  therefore 
as  to  things  constantly  demanded  and  constantly  produced  rests 
at  a  point  determined  by  the  cost  of  production — whatever  tends 
to  increase  the  cost  of  bringing  fresh  quantities  of  such  articles 
t )  the  consumer  increasing  price  by  checking  supply,  and  what 
ever  tends  ro  reduce  such  cost  decieasing  price  by  increasing 
supply.  Thus  taxes  on  wheat  or  tobacco  or  cloth  add  to  the 
price  that  the  consumer  must  pay,  and  thus  the  cheapening  in 
the  cost  of  producing  steel  which  improved  processes  have  made 
in  recent  years  has  greatly  reduced  the  price  of  steel.  But  land 
has  no  cost  of  production,  since  it  is  created  by  C^od,  not  pro- 
duced by  man.  Its  price  therefore  is  fixed — 1  (monopoly  rent), 
whore  land  is  held  in  close  monopoly,  by  what  the  owners  can 
extract  from  the  users  under  penalty  of  deprivation  and  con- 
sequently of  starvation,  and  amounts  to  all  that  common  labor 
can  earn  on  it  beyond  what  is  neressury  to  life  ;  2  (economic 
rent  proper),  where  there  is  no  special  monopoly,  by  what  the 


OPEN   LETTEE  TO   POPE  LEO   Xlll.  15 

nor  ia  any  way  take  from  the  individnal  wliat  belongs 
to  the  individual.  They  can  only  take  the  value  that 
attaches  to  land  by  the  growth  of  the  community,  and 
which  therefore  belongs  to  the  community  as  a  whole. 
To  take  land  values  for  the  state,  abolishing  all  taxes 
on  the  products  of  labor,  would  therefore  leave  to  the 
laborer  the  full  produce  of  labor ;  to  the  individual  all 
that  rightfully  belongs  to  the  individual.  It  would 
impose  no  burden  on  industry,  no  check  on  commerce, 
no  punishment  on  thrift ;  it  would  secure  the  largest 
production  and  the  fairest  distribution  of  wealth,  by 
leaving  men  free  to  produce  and  to  exchange  as  they 
please,  without  any  artificial  enhancement  of  prices ; 
and  by  taking  for  public  purposes  a  value  that  cannot 
be  carried  off,  that  cannot  be  hidden,  that  of  all  values 
is  most  easily  ascertained   and   most   certainly   and 

particular  land  will  yield  to  common  labor  over  and  above  what 
may  be  had  by  like  expenditure  and  exertion  on  land  having  no 
special  advantage  and  for  which  no  rent  is  paid  ;  and,  3  (specu- 
lative rent,  which  is  a  species  of  monopoly  rent,  telling  particu- 
larly in  selling  price),  by  the  expectation  of  future  increase  of 
value  from  social  growth  and  improvement,  which  expectation 
causing  land  owners  to  withhold  land  at  present  prices  has  the 
same  effect  as  combination. 

Taxes  on  land  values  or  economic  rent  can  therefore  never  be 
shifted  by  the  land  owner  to  the  land  user,  since  they  in  no  wise 
increase  the  demand  for  land  or  enable  land  owners  to  check 
supply  by  withholding  land  from  use.  Where  rent  depends  on 
mere  monopolization,  a  case  I  mention  because  rent  may  in  this 
way  be  demanded  for  the  use  of  land  even  befoi-e  economic  or 
natural  rent  arises,  the  taking  by  taxation  of  what  the  land- 
owners were  able  to  extort  from  labor  could  not  enable  them  to 
extort  any  more,  since  laborers,  if  not  left  enough  to  live  on, 
will  die.  So,  in  the  case  of  economic  rent  proper,  to  take  from, 
the  land  owners  the  premiums  they  receive,  would  in  no  way 
increase  the  superiority  of  their  land  and  the  demand  for  it. 
While  so  far  as  price  is  affected  by  speculative  rent,  to  compel 
the  land  owners  to  pay  taxes  on  the  value  of  land  whether  they 
were  getting  any  income  from  it  or  not.  would  make  it  more 
difficult  for  them  to  withhold  land  from  use  ;  and  to  tax  the 
full  value  would  not  merely  destroy  the  power  but  the  desire 
to  do  so. 


10  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

cheaply  collected,  it  would  enormously  lessen  the 
number  of  officials,  dispense  with  oaths,  do  away  with 
temptations  to  bribery  and  evasion,  and  abolish  man- 
made  crimes  in  themselves  innocent. 

But,  further  :  That  God  has  intended  the  state 
to  obtain  the  revenues  it  needs  by  the  taxation  of 
land  values  is  shown  by  the  same  order  and  degree  of 
evidence  that  shows  that  God  has  intended  the  milk 
of  the  mother  for  the  nourishment  of  the  babe. 

See  how  close  is  the  analogy.  In  that  primitive 
condition  ere  the  need  for  the  state  arises  there  are  no 
land  values.  The  products  of  labor  have  value,  but 
in  the  sparsity  of  population  no  value  as  yet  attaches 
to  land  itself.  But  as  increasing  density  of  population 
and  increasing  elaboration  of  industry  necessitate  the 
organization  of  the  state,  with  its  need  for  revenues, 
value  begins  to  attach  to  land.  As  population  still 
increases  and  industry  grows  more  elaborate,  so  the 
needs  for  public  revenues  increase.  And  at  the  same 
time  and  from  the  same  causes  land  values  increase. 
The  connection  is  invariable.  The  value  of  things 
produced  by  labor  tends  to  decline  with  social  develop- 
ment, since  the  larger  scale  of  production  and  the 
improvement  of  processes  tend  steadily  to  reduce 
their  cost.  But  the  value  of  land  on  which  popu- 
lation centers  goes  up  and  up.  Take  Home  or 
Paris  or  London  or  New  York  or  Melbourne. 
Consider  the  enormous  value  of  land  in  such  cities  as 
compared  with  the  value  of  land  in  sparsely  settled 
parts  of  the  same  countries.  To  what  is  this  due  ?  Is  it 
not  due  to  the  density  and  activity  of  the  populations 
of  those  cities — to  the  very  causes  that  require  great 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         17 

public  expenditure  for  streets,  drains,  public  buildings, 
and  all  the  many  tilings  needed  for  the  health,  con- 
venience and  safety  of  such  great  cities  ?  See  how 
with  the  growth  of  such  cities  the  one  thing  that 
steadily  increases  in  value  is  land ;  how  the  opening  of 
roads,  the  building  of  railways,  the  making  of  any 
public  improvement,  adds  to  the  value  of  land.  Is  it 
not  clear  that  here  is  a  natural  law — that  is  to  say  a 
tendency  willed  by  the  Creator  ?  Can  it  mean  anything 
else  than  that  He  who  ordained  the  state  with  its 
needs  has  in  the  values  which  attach  to  land  provided 
the  means  to  meet  those  needs  ? 

That  it  does  mean  this  and  nothing  else  is  confirmed 
if  we  look  deeper  still,  and  inquire  not  merely  as  to 
the  intent,  but  as  to  the  purpose  of  the  intent.  If  we 
do  so  we  may  see  in  this  natural  law  by  which  land  val- 
ues increase  with  the  growth  of  society  not  only  such  a 
perfectly  adapted  provision  for  the  needs  of  society 
as  gratifies  our  intellectual  perceptions  by  showing  us 
the  wisdom  of  the  Creator,  but  a  purpose  with  regard 
to  the  individual  that  gratifies  our  moral  perceptions 
by  opening  to  us  a  glimpse  of  His  beneficence. 

Consider :  Here  is  a  natural  law  by  which  as  society 
advances  the  one  thing  that  increases  m  value  is  land — 
a  natural  law  by  virtue  of  which  all  growth  of  popula- 
tion, all  advance  of  the  arts,  all  general  improvements 
of  whatever  kind,  add  to  a  fund  that  both  the 
commands  of  justice  and  the  dictates  of  expediency 
prompt  us  to  take  for  the  coiftmon  uses  of  society. 
Now,  since  increase  in  the  fund  available  for  the 
common  uses  of  society  is  increase  in  the  gain  that 
goes  equally  to  each  member  of  society,  is  it  not  clear 


18  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

that  the  law  by  which  land  values  increase  with  social 
advance  while  the  value  of  the  products  of  labor  do 
not  increase,  tends  with  the  advance  of  civilization  to 
make  the  share  that  goes  equally  to  each  member 
of  society  more  and  more  important  as  compared  with 
what  goes  to  him  from  his  individual  earnings,  and 
thus  to  make  the  advance  of  civilization  lessen  rel- 
atively the  differences  that  in  a  ruder  social  state 
must  exist  between  the  strong  and  the  weak,  the 
fortunate  and  the  unfortunate  ?  Does  it  not  show  the 
purpose  of  the  Creator  to  be  that  the  advance  of  man 
in  civilization  should  be  an  advance  not  merely  to 
larger  powers  but  to  a  greater  and  greater  equality, 
instead  of  what  we,  by  our  ignoring  of  His  intent,  are 
making  it,  an  advance  towards  a  more  and  more 
monstrous  inequality  ? 

That  the  value  attaching  to  land  with  social  growth 
is  intended  for  social  needs  is  shown  by  the  final 
proof.  God  is  indeed  a  jealous  God  in  the  sense  that 
nothing  but  injury  and  disaster  can  attend  the  effort 
of  men  to  do  things  other  than  in  the  way  He  has 
intended ;  in  the  sense  that  where  the  blessings  He 
proffers  to  men  are  refused  or  misused  they  turn  to 
evils  that  scourge  us.  And  just  as  for  the  mother 
to  withhold  the  provision  that  fills  her  breast  with 
the  birth  of  the  child  is  to  endanger  physical  health, 
60  for  society  to  refuse  to  take  for  social  uses  the  pro- 
vision intended  for  them  is  to  breed  social  disease. 

For  refusal  to  take  for  public  purposes  the  increasing 
values  that  attach  to  laud  with  social  growth  is  to 
necessitate  the  getting  of  public  revenues  by  taxes 
that  lessen  production,  distort  distribution  and  corrupt 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO   XIII.  19 

society.  It  is  to  leave  some  to  take  what  justly 
belongs  to  all ;  it  is  to  forego  the  only  means  by  which 
it  is  possible  in  an  advanced  civilization  to  combine 
the  security  of  possession  that  is  necessary  to  improve- 
ment with  the  equality  of  natural  opportunity  that 
is  the  most  important  of  all  natural  rights.  It  is  thus 
at  the  basis  of  all  social  life  to  set  up  an  unjust 
inequality  between  man  and  man,  compelling  some 
to  pay  others  for  the  privilege  of  living,  for  the  chance 
of  working,  for  the  advantages  of  civilization,  for  the 
gifts  of  their  God.  But  it  is  even  more  than  this. 
The  very  robbery  that  the  masses  of  men  thus  suffer 
gives  rise  in  advancing  communities  to  a  new  robbery. 
For  the  value  that  with  the  increase  of  population 
and  social  advance  attaches  to  land  being  suffered 
to  go  to  individuals  who  have  secured  ownership  of 
the  land,  it  prompts  to  a  forestalling  of  and  speculation 
in  land  wherever  there  is  any  prospect  of  advancing 
population  or  of  coming  improvement,  thus  produc- 
ing an  artificial  scarcity  of  the  natural  elements  of 
life  and  labor,  and  a  strangulation  of  production  that 
shows  itself  in  recurring  spasms  of  industrial  depression 
as  disastrous  to  the  world  as  destructive  wars.  It  is 
this  that  is  driving  men  from  the  old  countries  to  the 
new  countries,  only  to  bring  there  the  same  curses. 
It  is  this  that  causes  our  material  advance  not  merely 
to  fail  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  mere  worker, 
but  to  make  the  condition  of  large  classes  positively 
worse.  It  is  this  that  in  our  richest  Christian  countries 
is  giving  us  a  large  population  whose  lives  are  harder, 
more  hopeless,  more  degraded  than  those  of  the 
veriest  savages.  It  is  this  that  leads  so  many  men 
to  think  that  God   is   a  bungler  and  is  constantly 


20  THE   CONDITION  OF   LABOR. 

bringing  more  people  into  His  world  than  He  lias 
made  provision  for ;  or  that  there  is  no  God,  and  that 
belief  in  Him  is  a  superstition  which  the  facts  of  life 
and  the  advance  of  science  are  dispellinsr. 

The  darkness  in  light,  the  weakness  in  strength, 
the  poverty  amid  wealth,  the  seething  discontent 
foreboding  civil  strife,  that  characterize  our  civilization 
of  to-day,  are  the  natural,  the  inevitable  results  of  our 
rejection  of  God's  beneficence,  of  our  ignoring  of  His 
intent.  "Were  we  on  the  other  hand  to  follow  His 
clear,  simple  rule  of  right,  leaving  scrupulously  to  the 
individual  all  that  individual  labor  produces,  and 
taking  for  the  community  the  value  that  attaches  to 
land  by  the  growth  of  the  community  itself,  not 
merely  could  evil  modes  of  raising  public  revenues 
be  dispensed  with,  but  all  men  would  be  placed  on  an 
equal  level  of  opportunity  with  regard  to  the  bounty 
of  their  Creator,  on  an  equal  level  of  opportunity 
to  exert  their  labor  and  to  enjoy  its  fruits.  And  then, 
without  drastic  or  restrictive  measures  the  forestalling 
of  land  would  cease.  For  then  the  possession  of  land 
would  mean  only  security  for  the  permanence  of  its 
use,  and  there  would  be  no  object  for  any  one  to  get 
land  or  to  keep  land  except  for  use;  nor  would  his 
possession  of  better  land  than  others  had  confer  any 
unjust  advantage  on  him,  or  unjust  deprivation  on 
them,  since  the  equivalent  of  the  advantage  would  be 
taken  by  the  state  for  the  benefit  of  all. 

The  Right  Reverend  Dr.  Thomas  Nulty,  Bishop 

of  Meath,  who  sees  all  this  as  clearly  as  we  do,  in 

pointing  out  to  the  clergy  and  laity  of  his  diocese  * 

*  Letter  addressed  to  tbe  Clergy  aad  Laity  of  the  Diocese 
of  Meath,  Ireland,  April  2,  1381 


OPEN    LETTER   TO    POPE   LEO    XIII.  21 

the  design  of  Divine  Providence    that  the  rent  of 
land  should  be  taken  for  the  communitj,  says : 

"  I  think,  therefore,  that  I  may  fairly  infer,  on  the 
strength  of  authority  as  well  as  of  reason,  that  the 
people  are  and  always  must  be  the  real  owners  of  the 
land  of  their  country.  This  great  social  fact  appears 
to  me  to  be  of  incalculable  importance,  and  it  is 
fortunate,  indeed,  that  on  the  strictest  principles  of 
justice  it  is  not  clouded  even  by  a  shadow  of 
uncertainty  or  doubt.  There  is,  moreover,  a  charm 
and  a  peculiar  beauty  in  the  clearness  with  which 
it  reveals  the  wisdom  and  the  benevolence  of  the 
designs  of  Providence  in  the  admirable  provision  He 
has  made  for  the  wants  and  the  necessities  of  that 
state  of  social  existence  of  which  He  is  author,  and 
in  which  the  very  instincts  of  nature  tell  us  we  are 
to  spend  our  lives,  A  vast  public  property,  a  great 
national  fund,  has  been  placed  under  the  dominion 
and  at  the  disposal  of  the  nation  to  supply  itself 
abundantly  with  resources  necessary  to  liquidate  the 
expenses  of  its  government,  the  administration  of  its 
laws  and  the  education  of  its  youth,  and  to  enable  it 
to  provide  for  the  suitable  sustentation  and  support 
of  its  criminal  and  pauper  population.  One  of  the 
most  interesting  peculiarities  of  this  property  is  that 
its  value  is  never  stationary ;  it  is  constantly  progressive 
and  increasing  in  a  direct  ratio  to  the  growth  of  the 
population,  and  the  very  causes  that  increase  and 
multiply  the  demands  made  on  it  increase  proportion- 
ately its  ability  to  meet  them." 

There  is,  indeed,  as  Bishop  Nulty  says,  a  peculiar 
beauty  in  the  clearness  with  which  the  wisdom  and 
benevolence  of  Providence  are  revealed  in  this  great 
social  fact,  the  provision  made  for  the  common  needs 
of  society  in  what  economists  call  the  law  of  rent. 
Of  all  the  evidence  that  natural  religion  gives, 
it  is  this  that  most  clearly  shows  the  existence  of  a 


'22  THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

beneficent  God,  and  most  conclusively  silences  the 
doubts  that  in  our  days  lead  so  many  to  materialism. 
For  in  this  beautiful  provision  made  by  natural  law 
for  the  social  needs  of  civilization  we  see  that  God 
has  intended  civilization ;  that  all  om*  discoveries  and 
inventions  do  not  and  cannot  outrun  His  forethought, 
and  that  steam,  electricity  and  labor  saving  appliances 
only  make  the  great  moral  laws  clearer   and   more 
important.   In  the  growth  of  this  great  fund,  increasing 
with  social  advance — a  fund  that  accrues  from  the 
growth  of  the  community  and  belongs   therefore  to 
the  community — we  see  not  only  that  there  is  no  need 
for  the  taxes  that  lessen  wealth,  that  engender  corrup- 
tion, that  promote  inequality  and  teach  men  to  deny 
the  gospel ;  but  that  to  take  this  fund  for  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  evidently  intended  would  in  the 
highest  civilization  secure  to  all  the  equal  enjoyment  of 
God's  bounty,  the  abundant  opportunity  to  satisfy  their 
wants,  and  would  provide  amply  for  every  legitimate 
need  of  the  state.     "We  see  that  God  in  His  dealings 
with  men  has  not  been  a  bungler  or  a  niggard ;  that 
He  has  not  brought  too  many  men  into  the  world ; 
that  He  has  not  neglected  abundantly  to  supply  them; 
that  He  has  not  intended  that  bitter  competition  of 
the   masses  for  a  mere  animal   existence  and  that 
monstrous  aggregation  of  wealth  which  characterize 
our  civilization ;  but  that  these,  evils  which  lead  so 
many  to  say  there  is  no  God,  or  yet  more  impiously 
to  say  that  they  are  of  God's  ordering,  are  due  to  our 
denial  of  His  moral  law.     We  see  that  the  law  of 
justice,  the  law  of  the  Golden  Rule,  is  not  a  mere 
counsel  of  perfection,   but  indeed  the  law  of  social 
life,    We  see  that  if  we  were  only  to  observe  it 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.        23 

there  would  be  work  for  all,  leisure  for  all,  abundance 
for  all ;  and  that  civilization  would  tend  to  give  to  the 
poorest  not  onlj  necessaries,  but  all  comforts  and 
reasonable  luxuries  as  well.  We  see  that  Christ  was 
not  a  mere  dreamer  when  He  told  men  that  if  they 
would  seek  the  kingdom  of  God  and  its  right  doing 
they  might  no  more  worry  about  material  things  than 
do  the  lilies  of  the  field  about  their  raiment ;  but  that 
He  was  only  declaring  what  political  economy  in  the 
light  of  modern  discovery  shows  to  be  a  sober  truth. 

Your  Holiness,  even  to  see  this  is  deep  and  lasting 
joy.  For  it  is  to  see  for  one's  self  that  there  is  a  God 
who  lives  and  reigns,  and  that  He  is  a  God  of  justice 
and  love — Our  Father  who  art  in  Heaven.  It  is  to 
open  a  rift  of  sunlight  through  the  clouds  of  our 
darker  questionings,  and  to  make  the  faith  that  trusts 
where  it  cannot  see  a  living  thing. 


II. 

Your  Holiness  will  see  from  the  explanation  I  have 
given  that  the  reform  we  propose,  like  all  true  re- 
forms, has  both  an  ethical  and  an  economic  side.  By 
ignoring  the  ethical  side,  and  pushing  our  proposal 
merely  as  a  reform  of  taxation,  we  could  avoid  the 
objections  that  arise  from  confoimding  ownership 
with  possession  and  attributing  to  private  property  in 
land  that  security  of  use  and  improvement  that  can  be 
had  even  better  without  it.  All  that  we  seek  practi- 
cally is  the  legal  abolition,  as  fast  as  possible,  of  taxes 
on  the  products  and  processes  of  labor,  and  the  con- 
sequent concentration  of  taxation  on  land  values 
irrespective  of  improvements.     To  put  our  proposals 


24  THE   CONDITION   OF  LABOR. 

in  this  way  would  be  to  urge  them  merely  as  a 
matter  of  wise  public  expediency. 

There  are  indeed  many  single  tax  men  who  do  put 
our  proposals  in  this  way ;  who  seeing  the  beauty  of 
our  plan  from  a  fiscal  standpoint  do  not  concern  them- 
selves farther.  But  to  those  who  think  as  I  do,  the 
ethical  is  the  more  important  side.  Not  only  do  we 
not  wish  to  evade  the  question  of  private  property  in 
land,  but  to  us  it  seems  that  the  beneficent  and  far- 
reaching  revolution  we  aim  at  is  too  great  a  thing  to 
be  accomplished  by  "  intelligent  self-interest,"  and  can 
be  carried  by  nothing  less  than  the  religious  con- 
science. 

Hence  we  earnestly  seek  the  judgment  of  religion. 
This  is  the  tribunal  of  which  your  Holiness  as  the 
head  of  the  largest  body  of  Christians  is  the  most 
august  representative. 

It  therefore  behooves  us  to  examine  the  reasons 
you  urge  in  support  of  private  property  in  land — if  they 
be  sound  to  accept  them,  and  if  they  be  not  sound 
respectfully  to  point  out  to  you  wherein  is  their  error. 

To  your  proposition  that  "  Our  first  and  most  fun- 
damental principle  when  we  undertake  to  alleviate  the 
condition  of  the  masses  must  be  the  inviolability  of 
private  property  "  we  would  joyfully  agree  if  we  could 
only  understand  you  to  have  in  mind  the  moral 
element,  and  to  mean  rightful  private  property,  as 
when  you  speak  of  marriage  as  ordained  by  God's 
authority  we  may  understand  an  implied  exclusion  of 
improper  marriages.  Unfortunately,  however,  other 
expressions  show  that  you  mean  private  property  in 
general  and  have  expressly  in  mind  private  property 
in  land.     This  confusion  of  thought,  this  non-distri- 


OPEN   LETTKK  TO   POPE   LEO   XIII.  25 

"b  jtion  of  terms,  runs  through  your  whole  argument^ 
leading  you  to  conchisions  so  unwarranted  by  your 
premises  as  to  be  utterly  repugnant  to  them,  as  when 
from  the  moral  sanction  of  private  property  in  the 
things  produced  by  labor  you  infer  something  entirely 
different  and  utterly  opposed,  a  similar  right  of  pro- 
perty in  the  land  created  by  God. 

Private  property  is  not  of  one  species,  and  moral 
sanction  can  no  more  be  asserted  universally  of  it  than 
of  marriage.  That  proper  marriage  conforms  to  the 
law  of  God  does  not  justify  the  polygamic,  or  poly- 
andric  or  incestuous  marriages  that  are  in  some 
countries  permitted  by  the  civil  law.  And  as  there 
may  be  immoral  marriage  so  may  there  be  im- 
moral private  property.  Private  property  is  that 
which  may  be  held  in  ownership  by  an  individual,  or 
that  which  may  be  held  in  ownership  by  an  individual 
with  the  sanction  of  the  state.  The  mere  lawyer,  the 
mere  servant  of  the  state,  may  rest  here,  refusing  to 
distinguish  between  what  the  state  holds  equally  law- 
ful. Your  Holiness,  however,  is  not  a  servant  of 
the  state,  but  a  servant  of  God,  a  guardian  of  morals. 
You  know,  as  said  by  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin,  that — 

"  Human  law  is  law  only  in  virtue  of  its  accordance 
with  right  reason  and  it  is  thus  manifest  that  it  Hows 
from  the  eternal  law.  And  in  so  far  as  it  deviates 
from  right  reason  it  is  called  an  unjust  law.  In  such 
case  it  is  not  law  at  aU^  hut  rather  a  species  of 
violence.''^ 

Thus,  that  any  species  of  property  is  permitted  by 
the  state  does  not  of  itself  give  it  moral  sanction. 
The  state  has  often  made  things  property  that  are  not 
justly  property,  but  involve   violence  and  robbery. 


26 


THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 


For  instance,  the  things  of  religion,  the  dignity  and 
authority  of  offices  of  the  church,  the  power  of  ad- 
ministering her  sacraments  and  controlling  her  tempo- 
ralities have  often  by  profligate  princes  been  given 
as  salable  property  to  courtiers  and  concubines.  At 
this  very  day  in  England  an  atheist  or  a  heathen  may 
buy  in  open  market,  and  hold  as  legal  property,  to  be 
sold,  given  or  bequeathed  as  he  pleases,  the  power  of 
appointing  to  the  cure  of  souls,  and  the  value  of  these 
legal  rights  of  presentation  is  said  to  be  no  less  than 
£17,000,000. 

Or  again :  Slaves  were  universally  treated  as  property 
by  the  customs  and  laws  of  the  classical  nations,  and 
were  so  acknowledged  in  Europe  long  after  the  ac- 
ceptance of  Christianity.  At  the  beginning  of  this 
century  there  was  no  Christian  nation  that  did  not, 
in  her  colonies  at  least,  recognize  property  in  slaves, 
and  slave  ships  crossed  the  seas  under  Christian  flags. 
In  the  United  States,  little  more  than  thirty  years 
ago,  to  buy  a  man  gave  the  same  legal  ownership  as 
to  buy  a  horse,  and  in  Mohammedan  countries  law 
and  custom  yet  make  the  slave  the  property  of  his 
captor  or  purchaser. 

Yet  your  Holiness,  one  of  the  glories  of  whose 
pontificate  is  the  attempt  to  break  up  slavery  in  its 
last  strongholds, will  not  contend  that  the  moral  sanction 
that  attaches  to  property  in  things  produced  by  labor 
can,  or  ever  could,  apply  to  property  in  slaves. 

Your  use,  in  so  many  passages  of  your  Encyclical,  of 
the  inclusive  term  "  property  "  or  "  private  "  property, 
of  which  in  morals  nothing  can  be  either  afiirmed  or 
denied,  makes  your  meaning,  if  we  take  isolated 
sentences,  in  many  places  ambiguous.     But   reading 


OPEN   LETTER   TO   POPE   LEO   XIII.  27 

it  as  a  whole,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  your  intention 
that  private  property  in  land  shall  be  understood  when 
you  speak  merely  of  private  property.  With  this 
interpretation,  I  find  that  the  reasons  you  urge  for 
private  property  in  land  are  eight.  Let  us  consider 
them  in  order  of  presentation.     You  urge : 

1.  That  what  is  hought  wUh  rightful  property  is 
rightful  property.    (5.)* 

Clearly,  purchase  and  sale  cannot  give,  but  can  only 
transfer  ownership.  Property  that  in  itself  has  no 
moral  sanction  does  not  obtain  moral  sanction  by 
passing  from  seller  to  buyer. 

If  right  reason  does  not  make  the  slave  the  property 
of  the  slave  hunter  it  does  not  make  him  the  property 
of  the  slave  buyer.  Yet  your  reasoning  as  to  private 
property  in  land  would  as  well  justify  property  in 
slaves.  To  show  this  it  is  only  needful  to  change  in  your 
argument  the  word  land  to  the  word  slave.  It  would 
then  read : 

"  It  is  surely  undeniable  that  when  a  man  engages 
in  remunerative  labor  the  very  reason  and  motive  of 
his  work  is  to  obtain  property,  and  to  hold  it  in  his  own 
private  possession. 

"  If  one  man  hire  out  to  another  his  strength  or  his 
industry  he  does  this  for  the  purpose  of  receiving 
in  retm'u  what  is  necessary  for  food  and  living;  he 
thereby  expressly  proposes  to  acquire  a  full  and  legal 
right,  not  only  to  the  remuneration,  but  also  to  the 
disposal  of  that  remuneration  as  he  pleases. 

"  Thus,  if  he  lives  sparingly,  saves  money  and  invests 
his  savings  for  greater  security  in  a  slave^  the  slave  in 

*  To  facilitate  references  the  paragraphs  of  the  Encyclical  ftre 
indicated  by  number. 


28  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

such  a  case  is  only  liis  wages  in  another  f  oi-m ;  and  con- 
sequently a  vvorkingman's  slave  thus  purchased  should 
be  as  completely  at  his  own  disposal  as  the  wages  he 
receives  for  his  labor." 

Nor  in  turning  your  argument  for  private  property 
in  land  into  an  argument  for  private  property  in  men 
am  I  doing  a  new  thing.  In  my  own  country,  in  my 
own  time,  this  very  argument,  that  purchase  gave 
ownership,  was  the  common  defense  of  slavery.  It 
was  made  by  statesmen,  by  jurists,  by  clergymen,  by 
bishops ;  it  was  accepted  over  the  whole  country  by 
the  great  mass  of  the  people.  By  it  was  justified 
the  separation  of  wives  from  husbands,  of  children 
from  parents,  the  compelling  of  labor,  the  appropriation 
of  its  fruits,  the  buying  and  selling  of  Christians  by 
Christians.  In  language  almost  identical  with  yours 
it  was  asked,  "  Here  is  a  poor  man  who  has  worked 
hard,  lived  sparingly,  and  invested  his  savings  in  a 
few  slaves.  Would  you  rob  him  of  his  earnings  by 
liberating  those  slaves  ? "  Or  it  was  said :  ''  Here  is 
a  poor  widow ;  all  her  husband  has  been  able  to  leave 
her  is  a  few  negroes,  the  earnings  of  his  hard  toil. 
Would  you  rob  the  widow  and  the  orphan  by  freeing 
these  negroes  ? "  And  because  of  this  perversion  of 
reason,  this  confounding  of  unjust  property  rights 
with  just  property  rights,  this  acceptance  of  man's 
law  as  though  it  were  God's  law,  there  came  on  our 
nation  a  judgment  of  fire  an  1  blood. 

The  error  of  our  people  in  thinking  that  what  in 
itself  was  not  rightfully  property  could  become  rightful 
property  by  purchase  and  sale  is  the  same  error  into 
which  your  Holiness  falls.  It  is  not  merely  formally 
the  same  5  it  is  essentially  the  same.     Private  property 


01»EN  LETTEII  TO  POPE   LEO  Xm.  29 

in  land,  no  less  than  private  property  in  slaves,  is  a 
violation  of  the  true  rights  of  property.  They  are 
different  forms  of  the  same  robbery;  twin  devices 
by  which  the  perverted  ingenuity  of  man  has  sought 
to  enable  the  strong  and  the  cunning  to  escape  God's 
requirement  of  labor  by  forcing  it  on  others. 

What  difference  does  it  make  whether  I  merely 
own  the  land  on  which  another  man  must  live  or 
own  the  man  himself  ?  Am  I  not  in  the  one  case  as 
much  his  master  as  in  the  other  ?  Can  I  not  compel 
him  to  work  for  me  ?  Can  I  not  take  to  myself  as 
much  of  the  fruits  of  his  labor ;  as  fully  dictate  his 
actions  ?  Have  I  not  over  him  the  power  of  life  and 
death  ?  For  to  deprive  a  man  of  land  is  as  certainly 
to  kill  him  as  to  deprive  him  of  blood  by  opening 
his  veins,  or  of  air  by  tightening  a  halter  around  his 
neck. 

The  essence  of  slavery  is  in  empowering  one  man 
to  obtain  the  labor  of  another  without  recompense. 
Private  property  in  land  does  this  as  fully  as  chattel 
slavery.  The  slave  owner  must  leave  to  the  slave 
enough  of  his  earnings  to  enable  him  to  live.  Are 
there  not  in  so  called  free  countries  great  bodies  of 
workingmen  who  get  no  more  ?  How  much  more  of 
the  fruits  of  their  toil  do  the  agricultural  laborers  ot 
Italy  and  England  get  than  did  the  slaves  of  our 
Southern  States  ?  Did  not  private  property  in  land 
permit  the  land  owner  of  Europe  in  ruder  times 
to  demand  the  jus  jprimce  noctis  f  Does  not  the 
same  last  outrage  exist  to-day  in  diffused  form  in  the 
immorality  bom  of  monstrous  wealth  on  the  one 
hand  and  ghastly  poverty  on  the  other  ? 

In  what  did  the  slavery  of  Russia  consist  butingiv- 


30  THK   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

ing  to  the  master  land  on  which  the  serf  was  forced  to 
live?  When  an  Ivan  or  a  Catherine  enriched  their 
favorites  with  the  labor  of  others  they  did  not  give  men, 
thej  gave  land.  And  when  the  appropriation  of  land  has 
gone  so  far  that  no  free  land  remains  to  which  the 
landless  man  may  turn,  then  without  further  violence  the 
more  insidious  form  of  labor  robbery  involved  in  priv- 
ate property  in  land  takes  the  place  of  chattel  slavery, 
because  more  economical  and  convenient.  For  under 
it  the  slave  does  not  have  to  be  caught  or  held,  or  to 
be  fed  when  not  needed.  He  comes  of  himself, 
begging  the  privilege  of  serving,  and  when  no  longer 
wanted  can  be  discharged.  The  lash  is  unnecessary  ; 
hunger  is  as  efficacious.  This  is  why  the  Norman  con- 
querors of  England  and  the  English  conquerors  of 
Ireland  did  not  divide  up  the  people,  but  divided  the 
land.  This  is  why  European  slave  ships  took  their 
cargoes  to  the  New  World,  not  to  Europe. 

Slavery  is  not  yet  abolished.  Though  in  all  Christian 
countries  its  ruder  form  has  now  gone,  it  still  exists  in 
the  heart  of  our  civilization  in  more  insidious  form, 
and  is  increasing.  There  is  work  to  be  done  for  the 
glory  of  God  and  the  liberty  of  man  by  other  soldiers 
of  the  cross  than  those  warrior  monks  whom,  with  the 
blessing  of  your  Holiness,  Cardinal  Lavigerie  is  send- 
ing into  the  Sahara.  Yet,  your  Encyclical  employs 
in  defense  of  one  form  of  slavery  the  same  fallacies 
that  the  apologists  for  chattel  slavery  used  in  defense 
of  the  other ! 

The  Arabs  are  not  wanting  in  acumen.  Your 
Encyclical  reaches  far.  What  shall  your  warrior 
monks  say,  if  when  at  the  muzzle  of  their  rifles  they 
demand  of  some  Arab  slave  merchant  his  miserable 


OPEN  LETTER  TO   POPE   LEO  XllL  31 

caravan,  he  shall  declare  that  he  bought  them  with 
his  savings,  and  producing  a  copy  of  your  Encyclical, 
shall  prove  by  your  reasoning  that  his  slaves  are  conse- 
quently "  only  his  wages  in  another  form,"  and  ask 
if  they  who  bear  your  blessing  and  own  your 
authority  propose  to  "  deprive  him  of  the  liberty  of 
disposing  of  his  wages  and  thus  of  all  hope  and 
possibility  of  increasing  his  stock  and  bettering  his 
condition  in  life  ?  " 

2.  That  private  property  in  land  proceeds  from 
man's  gift  of  reason.    {6-7.) 

In  the  second  place  your  Holiness  argues  that  man 
possessing  reason  and  forethought  may  not  only  ac- 
quire ownership  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  but  also  of 
the  earth  itself,  so  that  out  of  its  products  he  may 
make  provision  for  the  future. 

Reason,  with  its  attendant  forethought,  is  indeed 
the  distinguishing  attribute  of  man  ;  that  which  raises 
him  above  the  brute,  and  shows,  as  the  Scriptures  de- 
clare, that  he  is  created  in  the  likeness  of  God.  And 
this  gift  of  reason  does,  as  your  Holiness  points  out, 
involve  the  need  and  right  of  private  property  in 
whatever  is  produced  by  the  exertion  of  reason  and 
its  attendant  forethought,  as  well  as  in  what  is  pro- 
duced by  physical  labor.  In  truth,  these  elements  of 
man's  production  are  inseparable,  and  labor  involves 
the  use  of  reason.  It  is  by  his  reason  that  man  differs 
from  the  animals  in  being  a  producer,  and  in  this 
sense  a  maker.  Of  themselves  his  physical  powers 
are  slight,  forming  as  it  were  but  the  connection 
by  which  the  mind  takes  hold  of  material  things,  so  as  to 
utilize  to  its  will  the  mr.tt'r  and  forces  of  nature.     It 


32  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

is  mind,  the  intelligent  reason,  that  is  the  prime 
mover  in  labor,  the  essential  agent  in  production. 
.  The  right  of  private  ownership  does  therefore  in- 
disputably attach  to  things  provided  by  man's  reason 
and  forethought.  But  it  cannot  attach  to  things  pro- 
vided by  the  reason  and  forethought  of  God ! 

To  illustrate :  Let  us  suppose  a  company  travelling 
through  the  desert  as  the  Israelites  travel  ed  from 
Egypt.  Such  of  them  as  had  the  forethought  to 
provide  themselves  with  vessels  of  water  would  ac- 
quire a  just  right  of  property  in  the  water  so  carried, 
and  in  the  thirst  of  the  waterless  desert  those  who  had 
neglected  to  provide  themselves,  though  they  might 
ask  water  from  the  provident  in  charity,  could  not  de- 
mand it  in  right.  For  while  water  itself  is  of  the 
providence  of  God,  the  presence  of  this  water  in  such 
vessels,  at  such  place,  results  from  the  providence  of 
the  men  who  carried  it.  Thus  they  have  to  it  an  ex- 
clusive right. 

But  suppose  others  use  their  forethought  in  push- 
ing ahead  and  appropriating  the  springs,  refusing  when 
their  fellows  come  up  to  let  tliem  drink  of  the  water 
save  as  they  buy  it  of  them.  Would  such  forethought 
give  any  right  ? 

Your  Holiness,  it  is  not  the  forethought  of  carrying 
water  where  it  is  needed,  but  the  forethought  of  seiz- 
ing springs,  that  you  ssek  to  defend  in  defending  the 
private  ownership  of  land  ! 

Let  me  show  this  more  fully,  since  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  meet  those  who  say  that  if  private  property 
in  land  be  not  just,  then  private  property  in  the 
products  of  labor  is  not  just,  as  the  material  of  these 
products  is  taken  from  land.     It  will  be  seen  on  con- 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIIL        33 

sideration  that  all  of  man's  production  is  analogous  to 
such  transportation  of  water  as  we  have  supposed.  In 
growing  grain,  or  smelting  metals,  or  building  houses, 
or  weaving  cloth,  or  doing  any  of  the  things  that  con- 
stitute producing,  all  that  man  does  is  to  change  in 
place  or  form  pre-existing  matter.  As  a  producer 
man  is  merely  a  changer,  not  a  creator;  God  alone 
creates.  And  since  the  changes  in  which  man's  pro- 
duction consists  inhere  in  matter  so  long  as  they  psr- 
sist,  the  right  of  private  ownership  attaches  the 
accident  to  the  essence,  and  gives  the  right  of  owner- 
ship in  that  natural  material  in  which  the  labor  of 
production  is  embodied.  Thus  water,  which  in  its 
original  form  and  place  is  the  common  gift  of  God 
to  all  men,  when  drawn  from  its  natural  reservoir  and 
brought  into  the  desert,  passes  rightfully  into  the 
ownership  of  the  individual  who  by  changing  its 
place  has  produced  it  there. 

But  such  right  of  ownership  is  in  reality  a  mere 
right  of  temporary  possession.  For  though  man  may 
take  material  from  the  storehouse  of  nature  and  change 
it  in  place  or  form  to  suit  his  desires,  yet  from  the 
moment  he  takes  it,  it  tends  back  to  that  storehouse 
again.  Wood  decays,  ii*on  rusts,  stone  disintegrates 
and  is  displaced,  while  of  more  perishable  products, 
some  will  last  for  only  a  few  months,  others  for  only 
a  few  days,  and  some  disappear  immediately  on  use. 
Though,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  matter  is  eternal  and 
force  forever  persists ;  though  we  can  neither  annihi- 
late nor  create  the  tiniest  mote  that  floats  in  a  sun- 
beam or  the  faintest  impulse  that  stirs  a  leaf,  yet  in  the 
ceaseless  flux  of  nature,  man's  work  of  moving  and  com- 
bining constantly  passes  away.     Thus  the  recognition 


S4  The  condition  of  labor. 

of  the  ownership  of  what  natural  material  is  embodied 
in  the  products  of  man  never  constitutes  more  than 
temporary  possession — never  interferes  with  the 
reservoir  provided  for  all.  As  taking  water  from  one 
place  and  carrying  it  to  another  place  by  no  means 
lessens  the  store  of  water,  since  whether  it  is  drunk  or 
spilled  or  left  to  evaporate,  it  must  return  again  to  the 
natural  reservoirs — so  is  it  with  all  things  on  which  man 
in  production  can  lay  the  impress  of  his  labor. 

Hence,  when  you  say  that  man's  reason  puts  it 
within  his  right  to  have  in  stable  and  permanent  pos- 
session not  only  things  that  perish  in  the  using,  but 
also  those  that  remain  for  use  in  the  future,  you  are 
right  in  so  far  as  you  may  include  such  things  as 
buildings,  which  with  repair  will  last  for  generations, 
with  such  things  as  food  or  firewood,  which  are  de- 
stroyed in  the  use.  But  when  you  infer  that  man 
can  have  private  ownership  in  those  permanent  things 
of  nature  that  are  the  reservoirs  from  which  all  must 
draw,  you  are  clearly  wrong.  Man  may  indeed  hold 
in  private  ownership  the  fruits  of  the  earth  produced 
by  his  labor,  since  they  lose  in  time  the  impress  of 
that  labor,  and  pass  again  into  the  natural  reservoirs 
from  which  they  were  taken,  and  thus  the  ownership 
of  them  by  one  works  no  injury  to  others.  But  he 
cannot  so  own  the  earth  itself,  for  that  is  the  reservoir 
from  which  must  constantly  be  drawn  not  only  the 
material  with  which  alone  men  can  produce,  but  even 
their  very  bodies. 

The  conclusive  reason  why  man  cannot  claim  owner- 
ship in  the  earth  itself  as  he  can  in  the  fruits  that 
he  by  labor  brings  forth  from  it,  is  in  the  facts  stated 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  ±ni.        35 

by  you  in  the  very  next  paragrapli  (7),  when  you 
truly  say : 

"  Man's  needs  do  not  die  out,  but  recur ;  satisfied 
to-day  they  demand  new  supplies  to-morrow.  Nature 
therefore  owes  to  man  a  storehouse  that  shall  never 
fail,  the  daily  supply  of  his  daily  wants.  And  this 
he  finds  only  in  the  inexhaustible  fertility  of  the  earthP 

By  man  you  mean  all  men.  Can  what  nature  owes 
to  all  men  be  made  the  private  property  of  some  men, 
from  which  they  may  debar  all  other  men  % 

Let  me  dwell  on  the  words  of  your  Holiness, 
"  Nature,  therefore,  owes  to  man  a  storehouse  that  shall 
never  fail."  By  Nature  you  mean  God.  Thus  your 
thought,  that  in  creating  us,  God  himself  has  incurred 
an  obligation  to  provide  us  with  a  storehouse  that  shall 
never  fail,  is  the  same  as  is  thus  expressed  and  carried 
to  its  irresistible  conclusion  by  the  Bishop  of  Meath : 

"  God  was  perfectly  free  in  the  act  by  which  He 
created  us ;  but  having  created  us  He  bound  himself 
by  that  act  to  provide  us  with  the  means  necessary  for 
our  subsistence.  The  land  is  the  only  source  of  this 
kind  now  known  to  us.  The  land,  therefore,  of  every 
country  is  the  common  property  of  the  people  of  that 
country,  because  its  real  owner,,  the  Creator  who  made 
it,  has  transferred  it  as  a  voluntary  gift  to  them. 
'  Terram  autem  deditfiliis  hominum.''  Now,  as  every 
individual  in  that  country  is  a  creature  and  child  of 
God,  and  as  all  His  creatures  are  equal  in  His  sight, 
any  settlement  of  the  land  of  a  country  that  would 
exclude  the  humblest  man  in  that  country  from  his 
share  of  the  common  inheritance  would  be  not  only 
an  injustice  and  a  wrong  to  that  man,  but,  moreover, 

be  AN  IMPIOUS  RESISTANCE  TO  THE   BENEVOLENT   INTEN- 
TIONS OF    HIS  CEEATOfi." 


36  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

•  3.  That  private  property  in  land  deprives  no  one 
of  the  use  of  land.     (8.) 

Your  own  statement  that  land  is  the  inexhaustible 
storehouse  that  God  owes  to  man  must  have  aroused 
in  your  Holiness's  mind  an  uneasy  questioning  of 
its  appropriation  as  private  property,  for,  as  though 
to  reassure  yourself,  you  proceed  to  argue  that  its 
ownership  by  some  will  not  injure  others.  You  say 
in  substance,  that  even  though  divided  among  private 
owners  the  earth  does  not  cease  to  minister  to  the 
needs  of  all,  since  those  who  do  not  possess  the  soil  can 
by  selling  their  labor  obtain  in  payment  the  produce 
of  the  land. 

Suppose  that  to  your  Holiness  as  a  judge  of  morals 
one  should  put  this  case  of  conscience  : 

"  I  am  one  of  several  children  to  whom  our  father 
left  a  field  abundant  for  our  support.  As  he  assigned 
no  part  of  it  to  any  one  of  us  in  particular,  leaving 
the  limits  of  our  separate  possession  to  be  fixed  by 
ourselves,  I  being  the  eldest  took  the  whole  field  in 
exclusive  ownership.  But  in  doing  so  I  have  not  de- 
prived my  brothers  of  their  support  from  it,  for  I 
have  let  them  work  for  me  on  it,  paying  them  from 
the  produce  as  much  wages  as  I  would  have  had  to 
pay  strangers.  Is  there  any  reason  why  my  con- 
science should  not  be  clear  ?" 

What  would  be  your  answer  ?  Would  you  not  tell 
him  that  he  was  in  mortal  sin,  and  that  his  excuse 
added  to  his  guilt?  Would  you  not  call  on  him  to 
make  restitution  and  to  do  penance  ? 

Or,  suppose  that  as  a  temporal  prince  your  Holi- 
ness were  ruler  of  a  rainless  land,  such  as  Egypt, 
where  there  were  no  springs  or  brooks,  their  want 
being  supplied  by  a  bountiful  river  like  the  Nile. 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         37 

Supposing  that  having  sent  a  number  of  your  subjects 
to  make  fruitful  this  land,  bidding  them  do  justly  and 
prosper,  you  were  told  that  some  of  them  had  set  up 
a  claim  of  OAVTiership  in  the  river,  refusing  the  others 
a  drop  of  water,  except  as  they  bought  it  of  them ; 
and  that  thus  they  had  become  rich  without  work, 
while  the  others,  though  working  hard,  were  so  im- 
poverished by  paying  for  water  as  to  be  hardly  able 
to  exist  ? 

Would  not  your  indignation  wax  hot  when  this  was 
told? 

Suppose  that  then  the  river  owners  should  send  to 
you  and  thus  excuse  their  action  : 

"  The  river,  though  divided-  among  private  owners 
ceases  not  thereby  to  minister  to  the  needs  of  all,  for 
there  is  no  one  who  drinks  who  does  not  drink  of  the 
water  of  the  river.  Those  who  do  not  possess  the 
water  of  the  river  contribute  their  labor  to  get  it ;  so 
that  it  may  be  truly  said  that  all  water  is  supplied 
either  from  one's  own  river,  or  from  some  laborious 
industry  which  is  paid  for  either  in  the  water,  or  in 
that  which  is  exchanged  for  the  water." 

"Would  the  indignation  of  your  Holiness  be  abated  ? 
Would  it  not  wax  fiercer  yet  for  the  insult  to  your 
intelligence  of  this  excuse  ? 

I  do  not  need  more  formally  to  show  your  Holiness 
that  between  utterly  depriving  a  man  of  God's  gifts 
and  depriving  him  of  God's  gifts  unless  he  will  buy 
them,  is  merely  the  difference  between  the  robber 
who  leaves  his  victim  to  die  and  the  robber  who  puts 
him  to  ransom.  But  I  would  like  to  point  out  how 
your  statement  that  '•  the  earth  though  divided  among 
private  owners  ceases  not  thereby  to  minister  to  the 
needs  of  all "  overlooks  the  largest  facts. 


38  THE    CONDITION  OF   LABOR. 

From  your  palace  of  the  Yatican  tlie  eye  may  rest 
on  the  expanse  of  the  Campagna,  where  the  jjious  toil 
of  religious  congregations  and  the  efforts  of  the  state 
are  only  now  beginning  to  make  it  possible  for  men 
to  live.  Once  that  expanse  was  tilled  by  thriving 
husbandmen  and  dotted  with  smiling  hamlets.  What 
for  centuries  has  condemned  it  to  desertion  ?  History 
tells  as.  It  was  private  property  in  land ;  the  growth 
of  the  great  estates  of  which  Pliny  saw  that  ancient 
It-aly  was  perishing;  the  cause  that,  by  bringing 
failure  to  the  crop  of  men,  let  in  the  Goths  and  Yan- 
dals,  gave  Roman  Britain  to  the  worship  of  Odin  and 
Thor,  and  in  what  were  once  the  rich  and  populous 
provinces  of  the  East  shivered  the  thinned  ranks  and 
palsied  arms  of  the  legions  on  the  cimiters  of  Moham- 
medan hordes,  and  in  the  sepulchre  of  our  Lord  and 
in  the  Church  of  St.  Sophia  trampled  the  cross  to 
rear  the  crescent ! 

If  you  will  go  to  Scotland,  you  may  see  great  tracts 
that  under  the  Gaelic  tenure,  which  recognized  the 
right  of  each  to  a  foothold  in  the  soil,  bred  sturdy 
men,  but  that  now,  under  the  recognition  of  private 
property  in  land,  are  given  up  to  wild  animals.  If  you 
go  to  Ireland,  your  Bishops  will  show  you,  on  lands 
where  now  only  beasts  graze,  the  traces  of  hamlets  that 
when  they  were  young  priests,  were  filled  with  honest, 
kindly,  religious  people.* 

*  Let  any  one  who  wishes  visit  this  diocese  and  see  with  his  own 
eyes  the  vast  aud  boundless  extent  of  the  fairest  land  in  Europe 
that  has  been  ruthlessly  depopulated  since  the  commencement  of 
the  present  century,  and  which  is  now  abandoned  to  a  loneliness 
and  solitude  more  depressing  than  that  of  the  prairie  or  the 
wilderness.  Thus  has  this  land  system  actually  exercised  the 
power  of  life  and  death  on  a  vast  scale,  for  which  there  is  no 
parallel  even  in  the  dark  records  of  slavery. — Bisliop  Nulty's  letter 
to  the  (Jlergy  and  Laity  of  the  Diocese  <>f  Meath, 


OPEN   LETTEE   TO   POPE   LEO   XIII.  39 

If  you  will  come  to  the  United  States,  you  will  find 
in  a  land  wide  enough  and  rich  enough  to  support  in 
comfort  the  whole  population  of  Europe,  the  growth 
of  a  sentiment  that  looks  with  evil  eye  on  immigration, 
because  the  artificial  scarcity  that  results  from  pri- 
vate property  in  land  makes  it  seem  as  if  there  is 
not  room  enough  and  work  enough  for  those  already 
here. 

Or  go  to  the  Antipodes,  and  in  Australia  as  in  Eng- 
land, you  may  see  that  private  property  in  land  is 
operating  to  leave  the  land  barren  and  to  crowd  the 
bulk  of  the  population  into  great  cities.  Go  wherever 
you  please  where  the  forces  loosed  by  modern  invention 
are  beginning  to  be  felt  and  you  may  see  that  private 
property  in  land  is  the  curse,  denounced  by  the  prophet, 
that  prompts  men  to  lay  field  to  field  till  they 
"  alone  dwell  in  the  midst  of  the  earth. " 

To  the  mere  materialist  this  is  sin  and  shame.  Shall 
we  to  whom  this  world  is  God's  world — we  who  hold 
that  man  is  called  to  this  life  only  as  a  prelude  to  a 
higher  life — shall  we  defend  it  ? 

4.  That  Industry  expended  on  land  gives  owner- 
ship in  the  land  itself.     (9-10) 

Your  Holiness  next  contends  that  industry  expended 
on  land  gives  a  right  to  ownership  of  the  land,  and 
that  the  improvement  of  land  creates  benefits  indis- 
tinguishable and  inseparable  from  the  land  itself. 

This  contention,  if  valid,  could  only  justify  the 
ownership  of  land  by  those  who  expend  industry  on 
it.  It  would  not  justify  private  property  in  land 
as  it  exists.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  justify 
a  gigantic  no-rent  declaration  that  would  take  laud 


40  THE   CONDITION'    OF    LABOR. 

from  those  who  now  legally  own  it,  the  landlords,  and 
turn  it  over  to  the  tenants  and  laborers.  And  if  it 
also  be  that  improvements  cannot  be  distinguished 
and  separated  from  the  land  itself,  how  could  the 
landlords  claim  consideration  even  for  improvements 
they  had  made  ? 

But  your  Holiness  cannot  mean  what  your  words 
imply.  What  you  really  mean,  I  take  it,  is  that  the 
original  justification  and  title  of  land  ownership  is  in 
the  expenditure  of  labor  on  it.  But  neither  can  this 
justify  private  property  in  land  as  it  exists.  For  is  it 
not  all  but  universally  true  that  existing  land  titles  do 
not  come  from  use,  but  from  force  or  fraud  ? 

Take  Italy  1  Is  it  not  true  that  the  greater  part  of 
the  land  of  Italy  is  held  by  those  who  so  far  from 
ever  having  expended  industry  on  it  have  been  mere 
appropriators  of  the  industry  of  those  who  have? 
Is  this  not  also  true  of  Great  Britain  and  of  other 
countries?  Even  in  the  United  States,  where  the 
forces  of  concentration  have  not  yet  had  time  to  fully 
operate  and  there  has  been  some  attempt  to  give  land 
to  users,  it  is  probably  true  to-day  that  the  greater 
part  of  the  land  is  held  by  those  who  neither  use  it 
nor  propose  to  use  it  themselves,  but  merely  hold  it 
to  compel  others  to  pay  them  for  permission  to  use  it. 

And  if  industry  give  ownership  to  land  what  are  the 
limits  of  this  ownership  ?  If  a  man  may  acquire  the 
ownership  of  several  square  miles  of  land  by  grazing 
sheep  on  it,  do3s  this  give  to  him  and  his  heirs  the 
ownership  of  the  same  land  when  it  is  found  to  con- 
tain rich  mines,  or  when  by  the  growth  of  population 
and  the  progress  of  society  it  is  needed  for  farming, 
for  gardening,  for  the  close  occupation  of  a  great 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         41 

city?  Is  it  on  the  rights  given  by  the  industry  of 
those  who  first  used  it  for  grazing  cows  or  growing 
potatoes  that  you  would  found  the  title  to  the  land 
now  covered  by  the  city  of  New  York  and  having  a 
value  of  thousands  of  millions  of  dollars  ? 

But  your  contention  is  not  valid.  Industry  expended 
on  land  gives  ownership  in  the  fruits  of  that  in- 
dustry, but  not  in  the  land  itself,  just  as  industry  ex- 
pended on  the  ocean  would  give  a  right  of  ownership 
to  the  fish  taken  by  it,  but  not  a  right  of  ownership 
in  the  ocean.  Kor  yet  is  it  true  that  private  owner- 
ship of  land  is  necessary  to  secure  the  fruits  of  labor  on 
land ;  nor  does  the  improvement  of  land  create  benefits 
indistinguishable  and  insepirable  from  the  land  itself. 
That  secure  possession  is  necessary  to  the  use  and 
improvement  of  land  I  have  already  explained,  but 
that  ownership  is  not  necessary  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  in  all  civilized  countries  land  owned  by  one  person 
is  cultivated  and  improved  by  other  persons.  Most 
of  the  cultivated  land  in  the  British  Islands,  as  in  Italy 
and  other  countries,  is  cultivated  not  by  owners  but 
by  tenants.  And  so  the  costliest  buildings  are  erected 
by  those  who  are  not  owners  of  the  land,  but  who  have 
from  the  owner  a  mere  right  of  possession  for  a  time 
on  condition  of  certain  payments.  Nearly  the  whole 
of  London  has  been  built  in  this  way,  and  in  New 
York,  Chicago,  Denver,  San  Francisco,  Sydney  and 
Melbourne,  as  well  as  in  continental  cities,  the  owners 
of  many  of  the  largest  edifices  will  be  found  to  be 
different  persons  from  the  owners  of  the  ground.  So 
far  from  the  value  of  improvements  being  inseparable 
from  the  value  of  land,  it  is  in  individual  transactions 
constantly  separated.     For  instance,  one-half  of  the 


42  THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

land  on  which  the  immense  Grand  Pacific  Hotel  in 
Chicago  stands  was  recently  separately  sold,  and  in 
Ceylon  it  is  a  not  infrequent  occurrence  for  one  person 
to  own  a  fruit  tree  and  another  to  own  the  ground  in 
which  it  is  implanted. 

There  is,  indeed,  no  improvement  of  land,  whether 
it  be  clearing,  plowing,  manuring,  cultivating,  the 
digging  of  cellars,  the  opening  of  wells  or  the  building 
of  houses,  that  so  long  as  its  usefulness  continues 
does  not  have  a  value  clearly  distinguishable  from  the 
value  of  the  land.  For  land  having  such  improvements 
will  always  sell  or  rent  for  more  than  similar  land 
without  them. 

If,  therefore,  the  state  levy  a  tax  equal  to  what  the 
land  irrespective  of  improvement  would  bring,  it  will 
take  the  benefits  of  mere  ownership,  but  will  leave  the 
full  benefits  of  use  and  improvement,  which  the 
prevailing  system  does  not  do.  And  since  the  holder, 
who  would  still  in  form  continue  to  be  the  owner, 
could  at  any  time  give  or  sell  both  possession  and 
improvements,  subject  to  future  assessment  by  the 
state  on  the  value  of  the  land  alone,  he  will  be  perfectly 
free  to  retain  or  dispose  of  the  full  amount  of  property 
that  the  exertion  of  his  labor  or  the  investment  of 
his  capital  has  attached  to  or  stored  up  in  the  land. 

Thus,  what  we  propose  would  secure,  as  it  is  im- 
possible in  any  other  way  to  secure,  what  you  properly 
say  is  just  and  right — "  that  the  results  of  labor  should 
belong  to  him  who  has  labored."  But  private  property 
in  land — to  allow  the  holder  without  adequate  payment 
to  the  state  to  take  for  himself  the  benefit  of  the  value 
that  attaches  to  land  with  social  growth  and  improve- 
mQnt — does  t^ko  the  results  of  hhQv  from  him  who 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         43 

has  labored,  does  turn  over  the  fruits  of  one  man's 
labor  to  be  enjoyed  by  another.  For  labor,  as  the 
active  factor,  is  the^  producer  of  all  wealth.  Mere 
ownership  produces  nothing.  A  man  might  own  a 
world,  but  so  sure  is  the  decree  that  "  by  the  sweat  of 
thy  brow  shalt  thou  eat  bread,"  that  without  labor  he 
could  not  get  a  meal  or  provide  himself  a  garment. 
Hence,  when  the  owTiers  of  land,  by  virtue  of  their 
ownership  and  without  laboring  themselves,  get  the 
products  of  labor  in  abundance,  these  things  must 
come  from  the  labor  of  others,  must  be  the  fruits 
of  others'  sweat,  taken  from  those  who  have  a  right  to 
them  and  enjoyed  by  those  who  have  no  right  to  them. 

The  only  utility  of  private  ovmership  of  land  as  dis- 
tinguished from  possession  is  the  evil  utility  of  giving 
to  the  owner  products  of  labor  he  does  not  earn.  For 
until  land  will  yield  to  its  owner  some  return  beyond 
that  of  the  labor  and  capital  he  expends  on  it — that  is 
to  say,  until  by  sale  or  rental  he  can  without  expendi- 
ture of  labor  obtain  from  it  products  of  labor,  owner- 
ship amounts  to  no  more  than  security  of  possession, 
and  has  no  value.  Its  importance  and  value  begin  only 
when,  either  in  the  present  or  prospectively,  it  will 
yield  a  revenue — that  is  to  say,  will  enable  the  owner 
as  owner  to  obtain  products  of  labor  without  exertion 
on  his  part,  and  thus  to  enjoy  the  results  of  others'  labor. 

What  largely  keeps  men  from  realizing  the  robbery 
involved  in  private  property  in  land  is  that  in  the  most 
striking  cases  the  robbery  is  not  of  individuals,  but  of 
the  community.  For,  as  I  have  before  explained,  it  is 
impossible  for  rent  in  the  economic  sense — that  value 
which  attaches  to  land  by  reason  of  social  growth  and 
improvement — to  go  to  the  user.     It  can  go  only  to  the 


44  THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

owner  or  to  the  community.  Tims  those  who  pay 
enormous  rents  for  the  use  of  land  in  such  centres  as 
London  or  New  York  are  not  individually  injured. 
Individually  they  get  a  return  for  what  they  pay,  and 
must  feel  that  they  have  no  better  right  to  the  use  of 
such  peculiarly  advantageous  localities  without  paying 
for  it  than  have  thousands  of  others.  And  so,  not 
thinking  or  not  caring  for  the  interests  of  the  com- 
munity, they  make  no  objection  to  the  system. ' 

It  recently  came  to  light  in  New  York  that  a  man 
having  no  title  whatever  had  been  for  years  collecting 
rents  on  a  piece  of  land  that  the  growth  of  the  city  had 
made  very  valuable.  Those  who  paid  these  rents  had 
never  stopped  to  ask  whether  he  had  any  right  to  them. 
They  felt  that  they  had  no  right  to  land  that  so  many 
'others  would  like  to  have,  without  paying  for  it, 
and  did  not  think  of,  or  did  not  care  for,  the  rights  of  all. 

5.  That  private  property  in  land  has  the  support 
of  the  common  opinion  of  mankind,  and  has  conduced 
to  peace  and  tranquility,  and  that  it  is  sanctioned  hy 
Divine  Law.     {11.) 

Even  were  it  true  that  the  common  opinion  of  man- 
kind has  sanctioned  private  property  in  land,  this  would 
no  more  prove  its  justice  than  the  once  universal  prac- 
tice of  the  known  world  would  have  proved  the  justice 
of  slavery. 

But  it  is  not  true.  Examination  will  show  that 
wherever  we  can  trace  them  the  first  perceptions  of 
mankind  have  alwajs  recognized  the  equality  of  right 
to  land,  and  that  when  individual  possession  became 
necessary  to  secure  the  right  of  ownership  in  things 
produced  by  labor  some  method  of  securing  equality, 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  Xlll.  46 

sufficient  in  the  existing  state  of  social  development, 
was  adopted.  Thus,  among  some  peoples,  land  used 
for  cultivation  was  periodically  divided,  land  used  for 
pasturage  and  wood  being  held  in  common.  Among 
others,  every  family  was  permitted  to  hold  what  land 
it  needed  for  a  dwelling  and  for  cultivation,  but  the 
moment  that  such  use  and  cultivation  stopped  any  one 
else  could  step  in  and  take  it  on  like  tenure.  Of  the 
same  nature  were  the  land  laws  of  the  Mosaic  code.  The 
land,  first  fairly  divided  among  the  people,  was  made 
inalienable  by  the  provision  of  the  jubilee,  under 
which,  if  sold,  it  reverted  every  fiftieth  year  to  the 
children  of  its  original  possessors. 

Private  property  in  land  as  we  know  it,  the  attach- 
ing to  land  of  the  same  right  of  ownership  that  justly 
attaches  to  the  products  of  labor,  has  never  grown  up 
anywhere  save  by  usurpation  or  force.  Like  slavery, 
it  is  the  result  of  war.  It  comes  to  us  of  the  modem 
world  from  your  ancestors,  the  Romans,  whose  civili- 
zation it  corrupted  and  whose  empire  it  destroyed. 

It  made  with  the  freer  spirit  of  the  northern 
peoples  the  combination  of  the  feudal  system,  in 
which,  though  subordination  was  substituted  for  equal- 
ity, there  was  still  a  rough  recognition  of  the  principle 
of  common  rights  in  land.  A  fief  was  a  trust,  and  to 
enjoyment  was  annexed  some  obligation.  The  sover- 
eign, the  representative  of  the  whole  people,  was  the 
only  owner  of  land.  Of  him,  immediately  or  medi- 
ately, held  tenants,  whose  possession  involved  duties 
or  payments,  which,  though  rudely  and  imperfectly, 
embodied  the  idea  that  we  would  carry  out  in  the 
single  tax,  of  taking  land  values  for  public  uses.  The 
crown  lands  maintained  the  sovereign  and  the  civil 


46  TfiE   CONt)ITION   OF  LABOR. 

list ;  the  church  lands  defrayed  the  cost  of  public  wor- 
ship and  instruction,  of  the  relief  of  the  sick,  the 
destitute  and  the  wayworn  ;  while  the  military  tenures 
provided  for  public  defense  and  bore  the  costs  of  war. 
A  fourth  and  very  large  portion  of  the  land  remained 
in  common,  the  people  of  the  neighborhood  being  free 
to  pasture  it,  cut  wood  on  it,  or  put  it  to  other  common 
uses. 

In  this  partial  yet  substantial  recognition  of  common 
rights  to  land  is  to  be  found  the  reason  why,  in  a  time 
when  the  industrial  arts  were  rude,  wars  frequent, 
and  the  great  discoveries  and  inventions  of  our  time 
unthought  of,  the  condition  of  the  laborer  was  devoid 
of  that  grinding  poverty  which  despite  our  marvellous 
advances  now  exists.  Speaking  of  England,  the 
highest  authority  on  such  subjects,  the  late  Professor 
Thorold  Rogers,  declares  that  in  the  thirteenth 
century  there  was  no  class  so  poor,  so  helpless,  so 
pressed  and  degraded  as  are  millions  of  Englishmen 
in  our  boasted  nineteenth  century ;  and  that,  save  in 
times  of  actual  famine,  there  was  no  laborer  so  poor 
as  to  fear  that  his  wife  and  children  might  come  to 
want  even  were  he  taken  from  them.  Dark  and 
rude  in  many  respects  as  they  were,  these  were  the 
times  when  the  cathedrals  and  churches  and  religious 
houses  whose  ruins  yet  excite  our  admiration  were 
built ;  the  times  when  England  had  no  national  debt, 
no  poor  law,  no  standing  army,  no  hereditary  paupers, 
no  thousands  and  thousands  of  human  beings  rising  in 
the  morning  without  knowing  where  they  might  lay 
their  heads  at  night. 

With  the  decay  of  the  feudal  system,  the  system  of 
private  property  in  land  that  had  destroyed  Rome  was 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.        47 

extended.  As  to  England,  it  may  briefly  be  said  that 
the  crown  lands  were  for  the  most  part  given  away  to 
favorites ;  that  the  church  lands  were  parcelled  among 
his  courtiers  by  Henry  VIII.,  and  in  Scotland  grasped 
by  the  nobles ;  that  the  military  dues  were  finally  re- 
mitted in  the  seventeenth  century,  a«id  taxation  on 
consumption  substituted ;  and  that  by  a  process  be- 
ginning with  the  Tudors  and  extending  to  our  own 
time  all  but  a  mere  fraction  of  the  commons  were  en- 
closed by  the  greater  land  owners ;  while  the  same 
private  ownership  of  land  was  extended  over  Ireland 
and  the  Scottish  Highlands,  partly  by  the  sword  and 
partly  by  bribery  of  the  chiefs.  Even  the  tailitary 
dues,  had  they  been  commuted,  not  remitted,  would 
to-day  have  more  than  sufficed  to  pay  all  public  ex- 
penses without  one  penny  of  other  taxation. 

Of  the  New  World,  whose  institutions  but  continue 
those  of  Europe,  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that  to  the 
parcelling  out  of  land  in  great  tracts  is  due  the  back- 
wardness and  turbulence  of  Spanish  America  ;  that  to 
the  large  plantations  of  the  Southern  States  of  the 
Union  was  due  the  persistence  of  slavery  there,  and 
that  the  more  northern  settlements  showed  the  earher 
English  feeling,  land  being  fairly  well  divided  and 
the  attempts  to  establish  manorial  estates  coming  to 
little  or  nothing.  In  this  lies  the  secret  of  the  more 
vigorous  growth  of  the  northern  states.  But  the  idea 
that  land  was  to  be  treated  as  private  property  had 
been  thoroughly  established  in  English  thought  before 
the  colonial  period  ended,  and  it  has  been  so  treated 
by  the  United  States  and  by  the  several  States. 
And  though  land  was  at  first  sold  cheaply,  and 
then  given  to  actual  settlers,  it  was  also  sold  in  large 


48  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

quantities  to  speculators,  given  away  in  great  tracts 
for  railroads  and  other  purposes,  until  now  the 
public  domain  of  the  United  States,  which  a  genera- 
tion ago  seemed  illimitable,  has  practically  gone. 
And  this,  as  the  experience  of  other  countries  shows, 
is  the  natural  result  in  a  growing  community  of 
making  land  private  property.  When  the  possession 
of  land  means  the  gain  of  unearned  wealth,  the  strong 
and  unscrupulous  will  secure  it.  But  when,  as  we 
propose,  economic  rent,  the  "  unearned  increment  of 
wealth,"  is  taken  by  the  state  for  the  use  of  the  com- 
munity, then  land  will  pass  into  the  hands  of  users 
and  remain  there,  since  no  matter  how  great  its  value, 
its  possession  will  only  be  profitable  to  users. 

As  to  private  property  in  land  having  conduced  to 
the  peace  and  tranquility  of  human  life,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary more  than  to  allude  to  the  notorious  fact  that 
the  struggle  for  land  has  been  the  prolific  source 
of  wars  and  of  law  suits,  while  it  is  the  poverty  en- 
gendered by  private  property  in  land  that  make  the 
prison  and  the  workhouse  the  unfailing  attributes  of 
what  we  call  Christian  civilization. 

Your  Holiness  intimates  that  the  Divine  Law  gives 
its  sanction  to  the  private  ownership  of  land,  quoting 
from  Deuteronomy,  "  Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neigh- 
bor's wife,  nor  his  house,  nor  his  field,  nor  his  man- 
servant, nor  his  maid-servant,  nor  his  ox,  nor  his  ass, 
nor  anything  which  is  his." 

If,  as  your  Holiness  conveys,  this  inclusion  of  the 
words,  "  nor  his  field,'"  is  to  be  taken  as  sanctioning 
private  property  in  land  as  it  exists  to-day,  then, 
but  with  far  greater  force,  must  the  words,  •'  his  man- 
servant, nor  his  maid-servant,"  be  taken  to  sanction 


OPEN  LETTEE  TO  POPE  LEO  Xni.        49 

chattel  slavery ;  for  it  is  evident  from  other  provisions 
of  the  same  code  that  these  terms  referred  both  to 
bondsmen  for  a  term  of  years  and  to  perpetual  slaves. 
But  the  word  "field"  involves  the  idea  of  use  and 
improvement,  to  which  the  right  of  possession  and 
ownership  does  attach  without  recognition  of  prop- 
erty in  the  land  itself.  And  that  this  reference  to 
the  "  field "  is  not  a  sanction  of  private  property  in 
land  as  it  exists  to-day  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
Mosaic  code  expressly  denied  such  unqualified  owner- 
ship in  land,  and  with  the  declaration,  "  the  land 
also  shall  not  be  sold  forever,  because  it  is  mine,  and 
you  are  strangers  and  sojourners  with  me, "  provided 
for  its  reversion  every  fiftieth  year;  thus,  in  a  way 
adapted  to  the  primitive  industrial  conditions  of  the 
time,  securing  to  all  of  the  chosen  people  a  foothold 
in  the  soil. 

Nowhere  in  fact  throughout  the  Scriptures  can  the 
slightest  justification  be  found  for  the  attaching  to 
land  of  the  same  right  of  property  that  justly  attaches 
to  the  things  produced  by  labor.  Everywhere  is  it 
treated  as  the  free  bounty  of  God,  "  the  land  which 
the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee." 

6.  That  fathers  should  provide  for  their  children 
and  that  private  property  in  land  is  necessary  to 
enable  them  to  do  so.    {1j^-17.) 

With  all  that  your  Holiness  has  to  say  of  the 
sacredness  of  the  family  relation  we  are  in  full  accord. 
But  how  the  obligation  of  the  father  to  the  child  can 
justify  private  property  in  land  we  cannot  see.  You 
reason  that  private  property  in  land  is  necessary  to  the 


50  THE   CONDITION   OF  LABOB. 

discharge  of  the  duty  of  the  father,  and  is  therefore 
requisite  and  just,  because — 

"  It  is  a  most  sacred  law  of  nature  that  a  father 
must  provide  food  and  all  necessities  for  those  whom 
he  has  begotten ;  and  similarly  nature  dictates  that  a 
man's  children,  who  carry  on  as  it  were  and  continue 
his  own  personality,  should  be  provided  by  him  with 
all  that  is  needful  to  enable  them  honorably  to  keep 
themselves  from  want  and  misery  in  the  uncertain- 
ties of  this  mortal  life.  Now  in  no  other  way  can  a 
father  effect  this  except  by  the  ownership  of  profitable 
property,  which  he  can  transmit  to  his  children  by 
inheritance."     (14.) 

Thanks  to  Him  who  has  bound  the  generations  of 
men  together  by  a  provision  that  brings  the  tenderest 
love  to  greet  our  entrance  into  the  world  and  soothes 
our  exit  with  filial  piety,  it  is  both  the  duty  and  the 
joy  of  the  father  to  care  for  the  child  till  its  powers 
mature,  and  afterwards  in  the  natural  order  it  becomes 
the  duty  and  privilege  of  the  child  to  be  the  stay  of 
the  parent.  This  is  the  natural  reason  for  that  rela- 
tion of  marriage,  the  ground  work  of  the  sweetest, 
tenderest  and  purest  of  human  joys,  which  the  Catho- 
lic Church  has  guarded  with  such  unremitting 
vigilance. 

We  do,  for  a  few  years,  need  the  providence  of  our 
fathers  after  the  flesh.  But  how  small,  how  transient, 
how  narrow  is  this  need,  as  compared  with  our  constant 
need  for  the  providence  of  Him  in  whom  we  live, 
move  and  have  our  being — Our  Father  who  art  in 
Heaven !  It  is  to  Him,  "  the  giver  of  every  good  and 
perfect  gift,"  and  not  to  our  fathers  after  the  flesh, 
that  Christ  taught  us  to  pray,  "  Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread."     And  how  true  it  is  that  it  is  through 


OPEN   LElTER  to   POPl!;   LEO  Xlll.  61 

Him  that  the  generations  of  men  exist.  Let  the  mean 
temperature  of  the  earth  rise  or  fall  a  few  degrees,  an 
amount  as  nothing  compared  with  differences  produced 
in  our  laboratories,  and  mankind  would  disappear  as 
ice  disappears  under  a  tropical  sun,  would  fall  as  the 
leaves  fall  at  the  touch  of  frost.  Or,  let  for  two  or 
three  seasons  the  earth  refuse  her  increase,  and  how 
many  of  our  millions  would  remain  alive  ? 

The  duty  of  fathers  to  transmit  to  their  children 
profitable  property  that  will  enable  them  to  keep 
themselves  from  want  and  misery  in  the  uncertainties 
of  this  mortal  life !  What  is  not  possible  cannot  be  a 
duty.  And  how  is  it  possible  for  fathers  to  do  that  ? 
Your  Holiness  has  not  considered  how  mankind  really 
lives  from  hand  to  mouth,  getting  each  day  its  daily 
bread;  how  little  one  generation  does  or  can  leave 
another.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  wealth  of  the  civilized 
world  all  told  amounts  to  anything  like  as  much  as  one 
year's  labor,  while  it  is  certain  that  if  labor  were  to 
stop  and  men  had  to  rely  on  existing  accumulation,  it 
would  be  only  a  few  days  ere  in  the  richest  countries 
pestilence  and  famine  would  stalk. 

The  profitable  property  your  Holiness  refers  to,  is 
private  property  in  land.  Now  profitable  land,  as  all 
economists  will  agree,  is  land  superior  to  the  land  that 
the  ordinary  man  can  get.  It  is  land  that  will  yield  an 
income  to  the  owner  as  owner,  and  therefore  that  will 
permit  the  owner  to  appropriate  the  products  of  labor 
without  doing  labor,  its  profitableness  to  the  individual 
involving  the  robbery  of  other  individuals.  It  is  there- 
fore possible  only  for  some  fathers  to  leave  their  chil- 
dren profitable  land.  What  therefore  your  Holiness 
practically  declares  is,  that  it  is  the  duty  of  all  fathers 


62  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

to  struggle  to  leave  their  children  what  only  the  few 
peculiarly  strong,  lucky  or  unscrupulous  can  leave ; 
and  that,  a  something  that  involves  the  robbery  of 
others — their  deprivation  of  the  material  gifts  of  God. 

This  anti-Christian  doctrine  has  been  long  in  practice 
throughout  the  Christian  world.     What  are  its  results  ? 

Are  they  not  the  very  evils  set  forth  in  your  Encycli- 
cal ?  Are  they  not,  so  far  from  enabling  men  to  keep 
themselves  from  want  and  misery  in  the  uncertainties 
of  this  mortal  life,  to  condemn  the  great  masses  of 
men  to  want  and  misery  that  the  natural  conditions 
of  our  mortal  life  do  not  entail ;  to  want  and  misery 
deeper  and  more  widespread  than  exist  among  heathen 
savages  ?  Under  the  regime  of  private  property  in 
land  and  in  the  richest  countries  not  five  per  cent,  of 
fathers  are  able  at  their  death  to  leave  anything 
substantial  to  tlieir  children,  and  probably  a  large 
majority  do  not  leave  enough  to  bury  them  !  Some 
few  children  are  left  by  their  fathers  richer  than  it  is 
good  for  them  to  be,  but  the  vast  majority  not  only  are 
left  nothing  by  their  fathers,  but  by  the  system  that 
makes  land  private  property  are  deprived  of  the  bounty 
of  their  Heavenly  Father;  are  compelled  to  sue  others 
for  permission  to  live  and  to  work,  and  to  toil  all  their 
xives  for  a  pittance  that  often  does  not  enable  them 
to  escape  starvation  and  pauperism. 

What  your  Holiness  is  actually,  though  of  course 
inadvertently,  urging,  is  that  earthly  fathers  should 
assume  the  functions  of  the  Heavenly  Father.  It  is 
not  the  business  of  one  generation  to  provide  the 
succeeding  generation  with  "  all  that  is  needful  to 
enable  them  honorably  to  keep  themselves  from  want 
and  misery."     That  is  God's  business.    We  no  more 


OPEN    LETTEE   TO   POPE   LEO   XIIT.  53 

create  our  children  than  we  create  our  fathers.  It  is 
God  who  is  the  Creator  of  each  succeeding  generation 
as  fully  as  of  the  one  that  preceded  it.  And,  to 
recall  your  own  words  (7),  "  Nature  [God]  therefore 
owes  to  man  a  storehouse  that  shall  never  fail,  the 
daily  supply  of  his  daily  wants.  And  this  he  finds 
only  in  the  inexhaustible  fertility  of  the  earth."  What 
you  are  now  assuming  is,  that  it  is  the  duty  of  men 
to  provide  for  the  wants  of  their  children  by  appropri- 
ating this  storehouse  and  depriving  other  men's  chil- 
dren of  the  unfailing  supply  that  God  has  provided 
for  all. 

The  duty  of  the  father  to  the  child — the  duty  pos- 
sible to  all  fathers !  Is  it  not  so  to  conduct  him- 
self, so  to  nm'ture  and  teach  it,  that  it  shall  come  to 
manhood  with  a  sound  body,  well  developed  mind, 
habits  of  virtue,  piety  and  industry,  and  in  a  state  of 
society  that  shall  give  it  and  all  others  free  access  to 
the  bounty  of  God,  the  providence  of  the  All-Father  ? 

In  doing  this  the  father  would  be  doing  more  to 
secure  his  children  from  want  and  misery  than  is 
possible  now  to  the  richest  of  fathers — as  much  more 
as  the  providence  of  God  surpasses  that  of  man.  For 
the  justice  of  God  laughs  at  the  efforts  of  men  to 
circumvent  it,  and  the  subtle  law  that  binds  humanity 
together  poisons  the  rich  in  the  sufferings  of  the  poor. 
Even  the  few  who  are  able  in  the  general  struggle  to 
leave  their  children  wealth  that  they  fondly  think 
will  keep  them  from  want  and  misery  in  the  uncer- 
tainties of  this  mortal  life — do  they  succeed  \  Does 
experience  show  that  it  is  a  benefit  to  a  child  to  place 
him  above  his  fellows  and  enable  him  to  think  God's 

Jaw  of  k^py  is  jiot  for  bim  \   Is  ftot  m^  w§^tl? 


54  THE   CONDITION    OF   LABOR. 

of  tener  a  curse  than  a  blessing,  and  does  not  its  expecta- 
tion often  destroy  filial  love  and  bring  dissensions  and 
heart  burnings  into  families  ?  And  how  far  and  how 
long  are  even  the  ri6hest  and  strongest  able  to  exempt 
their  children  from  the  common  lot  i  Nothing  is  more 
certain  than  that  the  blood  of  the  masters  of  the  world 
flows  to-day  in  lazzaroni  and  that  the  descendants  of 
kings  and  princes  tenant  slums  and  workhouses. 

But  in  the  state  of  society  we  strive  for,  where  the 
monopoly  and  waste  of  God's  bounty  would  be  done 
away  with  and  the  fruits  of  labor  would  go  to  the 
laborer,  it  would  be  within  the  ability  of  all  to  make 
more  than  a  comfortable  living  with  reasonable  labor. 
And  for  those  who  might  be  crippled  or  incapacitated, 
or  deprived  of  their  natural  protectors  and  bread 
winners,  the  most  ample  provision  could  be  made  out 
of  that  great  and  increasing  fund  with  which  God  in 
his  law  of  rent  has  provided  society — not  as  a  matter 
of  niggardly  and  degrading  alms,  but  as  a  matter 
of  right,  as  the  assurance  which  in  a  Christian  state 
society  owes  to  all  its  members. 

Thus  it  is  that  the  duty  of  the  father,  the  obligation 
to  the  child,  instead  of  giving  any  support  to  private 
property  in  land,  utterly  condemns  it,  urging  us  by  the 
most  powerful  considerations  to  abolish  it  in  the 
simple  and  efficacious  way  of  the  single  tax. 

This  duty  of  the  father,  this  obligation  to  chil- 
dren, is  not  confined  to  those  who  have  actually  chil- 
dren of  their  own,  but  rests  on  all  of  us  who  have 
come  to  the  powers  and  responsibilities  of  manhood. 

For  did  not  Christ  set  a  little  child  in  the  midst  of 
the  disciples,  saying  to  them  that  the  angels  of  such 
little  ones  always  behold  the  face  of  His  father ;  saying 


OPEN    LETTER   TO   POPE   LEO   XIII.  55 

to  them  that  it  were  better  for  a  man  to  hang  a 
millstone  about  his  neck  and  plunge  into  the  utter- 
most depths  of  the  sea  than  to  injure  such  a  little 
one? 

And  what  to-day  is  the  result  of  private  property  in 
land  in  the  richest  of  so  called  Christian  countries  ? 
Is  it  not  that  young  people  fear  to  marry ;  that  married 
people  fear  to  have  children ;  that  children  are  driven 
out  of  life  from  sheer  want  of  proper  nourishment  and 
care,  or  compelled  to  toil  when  they  ought  to  be  at 
school  or  at  play ;  that  great  numbers  of  those 
who  attain  maturity  enter  it  with  under-nourished 
bodies,  overstrained  nerves,  undeveloped  minds — 
under  conditions  that  foredoom  them,  not  merely  to 
suffering,  but  to  crime  ;  that  lit  them  in  advance  for 
the  prison  and  the  brothel  ? 

If  your  Holiness  will  consider  these  things  we  are 
confident  that  instead  of  defending  private  property 
in  land  you  will  condemn  it  with  anathema ! 

7.  That  the  private  ownership  of  land  stimulates 
industry^  increases  wealthy  and  attaches  men  to  the 
soil  and  to  their  country.     {61.) 

The  idea,  as  expressed  by  Arthur  Young,  that  "  the 
magic  of  property  turns  barren  sands  to  gold  "  springs 
from  the  confusion  of  ownership  with  possession,  of 
which  I  have  before  spoken,  that  attributes  to  private 
property  in  land  what  is  due  to  security  of  the  products 
of  labor.  It  is  needless  for  me  again  to  point  out 
that  the  change  we  propose,  the  taxation  for  public 
uses  of  land  values,  or  economic  rent,  and  the  aboli- 
tion of  other  taxes,  would  give  to  the  user  of  land  far 
greater  security  for  the  fruits  of  his  labor  than  the 


56  THE    CONDITION    OF   LABOR. 

present  system  and  far  greater  permanence  of  posses- 
sion. Kor  is  it  necessary  further  to  show  how  it 
would  give  homes  to  those  who  are  now  homeless  and 
bind  men  to  their  country.  For  under  it  every  one 
who  wanted  a  piece  of  land  for  a  home  or  for  produc- 
tive use  could  get  it  without  purchase  price  and  hold 
it  even  without  tax,  since  the  tax  we  propose  would 
not  fall  on  all  laud,  nor  even  on  all  land  in  use,  but 
only  on  land  better  than  the  poorest  land  in  use,  and 
is  in  reality  not  a  tax  at  all,  but  merely  a  return  to  the 
state  for  the  use  of  a  valuable  privilege.  And  even 
those  who  from  circumstances  or  occupation  did  not 
wish  to  make  permanent  use  of  land  would  still  have 
an  equal  interest  with  all  others  in  the  land  of  their 
country  and  in  the  general  prosperity. 

But  I  should  like  your  Holiness  to  consider  how 
utterly  unnatural  is  the  condition  of  the  masses  in  the 
richest  and  most  progressive  of  Christian  countries; 
how  large  bodies  of  them  live  in  habitations  in  which 
a  rich  man  would  not  ask  his  dog  to  dwell ;  how  the 
great  majority  have  no  homes  from  which  they  are 
not  liable  on  the  slightest  misfortune  to  be  evicted  ; 
how  numbers  have  no  homes  at  all,  but  must  seek 
what  shelter  chance  or  charity  offers.  I  should  like 
to  ask  your  Holiness  to  consider  how  the  gi'eat  majority 
of  men  in  such  countries  have  no  interest  whatever  in 
what  they  are  taught  to  call  their  native  land,  for 
whic'h  they  are  told  that  on  occasions  it  is  tlieir  duty 
to  light  or  to  die.  What  right,  for  instance,  have  the 
majority  of  your  countrymen  in  the  land  of  their  birth? 
Can  they  live  in  Italy  outside  of  a  prison  or  a  poor? 
house  except  as  they  buy  the  privilege  from  some  of 
the  eSQlusivQ  owners  ^|  Jtaly?    Cannot  an  English. 


OPEN   LETTER   TO    POPE    LEO   XIII.  57 

man,  an  American,  an  Arab  or  a  .Japanese  do  as  much  ? 
May  not  what  was  said  centuries  ago  bj  Tiberius 
Gracchus  be  said  to-day:  '■''Men  of  Rome!  you  are 
called  the  lords  of  the  world,  yet  have  no  right  to  a 
square  foot  of  its  soil !  The  wild  heasts  have  their 
dens,  hut  the  soldiers  of  Italy  have  only  water  and  air  /'' 
What  is  true  of  Italy  is  true  of  the  civilized  world — 
is  becoming  increasingly  true.  It  is  the  inevitable 
effect  as  civilization  progresses  of  private  property  in 
land. 

8.  That  the  right  to  possess  private  property  in  land 
is  from  Nature,  not  from,  man  ;  that  the  state  has  no 
right  to  abolish  it,  and  that  to  take  the  value  oflarvd 
ownership  in  taxation  would  he  unjust  and  cruel  to 
the  private  owner.  {61). 

This,  like  much  else  that  your  Holiness  says,  is 
masked  in  the  use  of  the  indefinite  terms  private 
property  and  private  owner — a  want  of  precision  in 
the  use  of  words  tliat  has  doubtless  aided  in  the  con- 
fusion of  your  own  thought.  But  the  context  leaves 
no  doubt  that  by  private  property  you  mean  private 
property  in  land,  and  by  private  owner,  the  private 
owner  of  land. 

The  contention,  thus  made,  that  private  property 
in  land  is  from  nature,  not  from  man,  has  no  other 
basis  than  the  confounding  of  ownership  with 
possession  and  the  ascription  to  property  in  land 
of  what  belongs  to  its  contradictory,  property  in  the 
proceeds  of  labor.  You  do  not  attempt  to  show  for 
it  any  other  basis,  nor  has  any  one  else  ever  attempted 
to  do  so.  That  private  property  in  the  products  of 
iabor  is  from  nature  is  cl^ai",  for  R^t\ire  ^ives  si^qU 


58  •   THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

things  to  labor  and  to  labor  alone.  Of  every  article 
of  this  kind,  we  know  that  it  came  into  being  as  nature's 
response  to  the  exertion  of  an  individual  man  or  of 
individual  men — given  by  nature  directly  and  ex- 
clusively to  him  or  to  them.  Thus  there  inheres  in 
such  things  a  right  of  private  property,  which  originates 
from  and  goes  back  to  the  source  of  ownership,  the 
maker  of  the  thing.  This  right  is  anterior  to  the 
state  and  superior  to  its  enactments,  so  that,  as  we 
hold,  it  is  a  violation  of  natural  right  and  an  injustice 
to  the  private  owner  for  the  state  to  tax  the  processes 
and  products  of  labor.  They  do  not  belong  to  Csesar. 
They  are  things  that  God,  of  whom  nature  is  but  an 
expression,  gives  to  those  who  apply  for  them  in  the 
way  He  has  appointed — by  labor. 

But  who  will  dare  trace  the  individual  ownership  of 
land  to  any  grant  from  the  Maker  of  land  ?  What 
does  nature  give  to  such  ownership  ?  how  does  she  in 
any  way  recognize  it?  Will  any  one  show  from 
difference  of  form  or  feature,  of  stature  or  complexion, 
from  dissection  of  their  bodies  or  analysis  of  their 
powers  and  needs,  that  one  man  was  intended  by 
nature  to  own  land  and  another  to  live  on  it  as  his 
tenant?  That  which  derives  its  existence  from  man 
and  passes  away  like  him,  which  is  indeed  but  the 
evanescent  expression  of  his  labor,  man  may  hold 
and  transfer  as  the  exclusive  property  of  the  individual ; 
but  how  can  such  individual  ownership  attach  to  land, 
which  existed  before  man  was,  and  which  continues  to 
exist  while  the  generations  of  men  come  and  go — the 
unfailing  storehouse  that  the  Creator  gives  to  man  for 
"  the  daily  supply  of  his  daily  wants  ?" 

Clearly,  the  private  ownership  of  land  is  from  the 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         59 

state,  not  from  nature.  Thus,  not  merely  can  no 
objection  be  made  on  the  score  of  morals  when  it  is 
proposed  that  the  state  shall  abolish  it  altogether,  but 
insomuch  as  it  is  a  violation  of  natural  right,  its  exist- 
ence involving  a  gross  injustice  on  the  part  of  the 
state,  an  "  impious  violation  of  the  benevolent  inten- 
tion of  the  Creator,"  it  is  a  moral  duty  that  the  state 
so  abolish  it. 

So  far  from  there  being  anything  unjust  in  taking 
the  full  value  of  land  ownership  for  the  use  of  the 
community,  the  real  injustice  is  in  leaving  it  in  private 
hands — an  injustice  that  amounts  to  robbery  and 
mutder. 

And  when  your  Holiness  shall  see  this  I  have  no  fear 
that  you  will  listen  for  one  moment  to  the  impudent 
plea  that  before  the  community  can  take  what  God 
intended  it  to  take,  before  men  who  have  been  disin- 
herited of  their  natural  rights  can  be  restored  to  them, 
the  present  owners  of  land  shall  first  be  compensated. 

For  not  only  will  you  see  that  the  single  tax  will 
directly  and  largely  benefit  small  land  owners,  whose 
interests  as  laborers  and  capitalists  are  much  greater 
than  their  interests  as  land  owners,  and  that  though 
the  great  landowners — or  rather  the  propertied  class 
in  general  among  whom  the  profits  of  land  o^vnership 
are  really  divided  through  mortgages,  rent  charges, 
etc. — would  relatively  lose,  they  too  would  be  absolute 
gainers  in  the  increased  prosperity  and  improved 
morals ;  but  more  quickly,  more  strongly,  more  per- 
emptorily than  from  any  calculation  of  gains  or  losses 
would  your  duty  as  a  man,  your  faith  as  a  Christian, 
forbid  you  to  listen  for  one  moment  to  any  such  palter- 
ing with  right  and  wrong. 


60  THE    :  JNDITION   OF   LABOR. 

Where  J;he  state  takes  some  land  for  public  uses  it  is 
only  just  that  those  whose  land  is  taken  should  be  com- 
pensated, otherwise  some  land  owners  would  be  treated 
more  harshly  than  others.  But  where,  by  a  measure 
affecting  all  alike,  rent  is  appropriated  for  the  benefit 
of  all,  there  can  be  no  claim  to  compensation.  Com- 
pensation in  such  case  would  be  a  continuance  of  the 
same  injustice  in  another  form — the  giving  to  land 
owners  in  the  shape  of  interest  of  what  they  before 
got  as  rent.  Your  Holiness  knows  that  justice  and  in- 
justice are  not  thus  to  be  juggled  with,  and  when  you 
f  mly  realize  that  land  is  really  the  storehouse  that  God 
owes  to  all  His  children,  you  will  no  more  listen  to 
any  demand  for  compensation  for  restoring  it  to  them 
than  Moses  would  have  listened  to  a  demand  that 
Pharaoh  should  be  compensated  before  letting  the 
children  of  Israel  go. 

Compensated  for  what  ?  For  giving  up  what  has 
been  unjustly  taken  ?  The  demand  of  land  owners 
for  compensation  is  not  that.  We  do  not  seek  to  spoil 
the  Egyptians.  We  do  not  ask  that  what  has  been 
unjustly  taken  from  laborers  shall  be  restored-  We 
are  willing  that  bygones  should  be  bygones  and  to 
leave  dead  wrongs  to  bury  their  dead.  We  propose 
to  let  those  who  by  the  past  appropriation  of  land 
value  have  taken  the  fruits  of  labor  to  retain  what  they 
have  thus  got.  We  merely  propose  that  for  the  future 
such  robbery  of  labor  shall  cease— that  for  the  fu- 
ture, not  for  the  past,  landholders  shall  pay  to 
the  community  the  rent  that  to  the  community  is 
justly  due, 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XHI.        61 
III. 

I  have  said  enough  to  show  your  Holiness  the  injus- 
tice into  which  you  fall  in  classing  us,  who  in  seeking 
virtually  to  abolish  private  property  in  land  seek  more 
fully  to  secure  the  true  rights  of  property,  with  those 
whom  you  speak  of  as  socialists,  who  wish  to  make  all 
property  common.  But  you  also  do  injustice  to  the 
socialists. 

There  are  many,  it  is  true,  who  feeling  bitterly  tlie 
monstrous  wrongs  of  the  present  distribution  of  wealth 
are  animated  only  by  a  blind  hatred  of  the  rich  and  a 
fierce  desire  to  destroy  existing  social  adjustments. 
This  class  is  indeed  only  less  dangerous  than  those 
who  proclaim  that  no  social  improvement  is  needed 
or  is  possible.  But  it  is  not  fair  to  confound  with 
them  those  who,  however  mistakenly,  propose  definite 
schemes  of  remedy. 

The  sociahsts,  as  I  understand  them,  and  as  the 
term  has  come  to  apply  to  anything ,  like  a  definite 
theory  and  not  to  be  vaguely  and  improperly  used  to 
include  all  who  desire  social  improvement,  do  not,  as 
you  imply,  seek  the  abolition  of  all  private  property. 
Those  who  do  this  are  properly  called  communists. 
What  the  socialists  seek  is  the  state  assumption 
of  capital  (in  which  they  vaguely  and  erroneously 
include  land),  or  more  properly  speaking,  of  large 
capitals,  and  state  management  and  direction  of  at 
least  the  larger  operations  of  industry.  In  this  way 
they  hope  to  abolish  interest,  which  they  regard  as  a 
wrong  and  an  evil ;  to  do  away  with  the  gains  of  ex- 
changers, speculators,  contractors  and  middlemen, 
which  they  regard  as  waste;  to  do  away  with  the 
wage  system  and  secure  general   co-operation;  and 


62  *fH£  cois'iDiuoN  OF  Labor. 

to  prevent  competition,  which  they  deem  the 
fundamental  cause  of  the  impoverishment  of  labor. 
The  more  moderate  of  them,  without  going  so  far, 
go  in  the  same  direction,  and  seek  some  remedy  or 
palliation  of  the  worst  forms  of  poverty  by  govern- 
ment regulation.  The  essential  character  of  socialism 
is  that  it  looks  to  the  extension  of  the  functions  of  the 
state  for  the  remedy  of  social  evils ;  that  it  would 
substitute  regulation  and  direction  for  competition; 
and  intelligent  control  by  organized  society  for  the 
free  play  of  individual  desire  and  effort. 

Though  not  usually  classed  as  socialists,  both  the 
trades  unionists  and  the  protectionists  have  the  same 
essential  character.  The  trades  unionists  seek  the 
increase  of  wages,  the  reduction  of  working  hours  and 
the  general  improvement  in  the  condition  of  wage- 
workers,  by  organizing  them  into  guilds  or  associa- 
tions which  shall  fix  the  rates  at  which  they  will  sell 
their  labor ;  shall  deal  as  one  body  with  employers  in 
case  of  dispute ;  skall  use  on  occasion  their  necessary 
weapon,  the  strike;  and  shall  accumulate  funds  for 
such  purposes  and  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  mem- 
bers when  on  a  strike,  or  (sometimes)  when  out  of  em- 
ployment. The  protectionists  seek  by  governmental 
prohibitions  or  taxes  on  imports  to  regulate  the  in 
dustry  and  control  the  exchanges  of  each  country,  so, 
as  they  imagine,  to  diversify  home  industries  and  pre- 
vent the  competition  of  people  of  other  countries. 

At  the  opposite  extreme  are  the  anarchists,  a 
term  which,  though  frequently  applied  to  mere  vio- 
lent destructionists,  refers  also  to  those  who,  seeing  the 
many  evils  of  too  much  government,  regard  govern- 
ment in  itself  as  evil,  and  believe  that  in  the  absence 


OPEjf   LKTTfiR  TO   POPE   LEO  XIll.  63 

of  coercive  power  the  mutual  interests  of  men  would 
secure  voluntarily  what  co-operation  is  needed. 

Differing  from  all  these  are  those  for  whom  I  would 
speak.  Believing  that  the  rights  of  true  property  are 
sacred,  we  would  regard  forcible  communism  as 
robbery  that  would  bring  destruction.  But  we  would 
not  be  disposed  to  deny  that  voluntary  communism 
might  be  the  highest  possible  state  of  which  men 
can  conceive.  Nor  do  we  say  that  it  cannot  be 
possible  for  mankind  to  attain  it,  since  among  the 
early  Christians  and  among  the  religious  orders  of  the 
Cathohc  church  we  have  examples  of  communistic 
societies  on  a  small  scale.  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul, 
St.  Thomas  of  Aquin  and  Pra  Angelico,  the  illus- 
trious orders  of  the  Carmelites  and  Franciscans,  the 
Jesuits,  whose  heroism  carried  the  cross  among  the 
most  savage  tribes  of  American  forests,  the  societies 
that  wherever  your  communion  is  known  have 
deemed  no  work  of  mercy  too  dangerous  or  too  re- 
pellent— were  or  are  communists.  Knowing  these 
things  we  cannot  take  it  on  ourselves  to  say  that  a 
social  condition  may  not  be  possible  in  which  an  all- 
embracing  love  shall  have  taken  the  place  of  all  other 
motives.  But  we  see  that  communism  is  only 
possible  where  there  exists  a  general  and  intense  re- 
Hgious  faith,  and  we  see  that  such  a  state  can  be 
reached  only  through  a  state  of  justice.  For  before  a 
man  can  be  a  saint  he  must  first  be  an  honest  man. 

"With  both  anarchists  and  socialists,  we,  who  for 
want  of  a  better  term  have  come  to  call  ourselves  single 
tax  men,  fundamentally  differ.  We  regard  them  as  eir- 
iug  in  opposite  directions — the  one  in  ignoring  the 
social  nature  of  man,  the  other  in  ignoring  his  individual 


64  THE  coNDrnoN  of  labor. 

nature.  While  we  see  that  man  is  primarily  an 
individual,  and  that  nothing  but  evil  has  come  or  can 
come  from  the  interference  by  the  state  with  things 
that  belong  to  individual  action,  we  also  see  that  he 
is  a  social  being,  or,  as  Aristotle  called  him,  a  political 
animal,  and  that  the  state  is  requisite  to  social  advance, 
having  an  indispensable  place  in  the  natural  order. 
Looking  oa  the  bodily  organism  as  the  analogue  of 
the  social  organism,  and  on  the  proper  functions 
of  the  state  as  akin  to  those  that  in  the  human 
organism  are  discharged  by  the  conscious  intelligence, 
while  the  play  of  individual  impulse  and  interest 
performs  functions  akin  to  those  discharged  in  the 
bodily  organism  by  the  unconscious  instincts  and 
involuntary  motions,  the  anarchists  seem  to  us  like 
men  who  would  try  to  get  along  without  heads  and 
the  socialists  like  men  who  would  try  to  rule  the 
wonderfully  complex  and  delicate  internal  relations  of 
their  frames  by  conscious  will. 

The  philosophical  anarchists  of  whom  I  speak  are 
few  in  number,  and  of  little  practical  importance.  It 
is  with  socialism  in  its  various  phases  that  we  have  to 
do  battle. 

With  the  socialists  we  have  some  points  of  agree- 
ment, for  we  recognize  fully  the  socia'x  nature  of  man 
and  believe  that  all  monopolies  should  be  Jield  and  gov- 
erned by  the  state.  In  these,  and  in  directions 
where  the  general  health,  knowledge,  comfort  and  con- 
venience might  be  improved,  we,  too,  would  extend 
the  functions  of  the  state. 

But  it  seems  to  us  the  vice  of  socialism  in  all  its  de- 
grees is  its  want  of  radicalism,  of  going  to  the  root.  It 
takes  its  theories  from  those  who  have  sought  to  justify 


OPKN   LETtEft  to  POPE   LEO  Xlli.  65 

the  impoveriihment  of  the  masses,  and  its  advocates 
generally  teach  the  preposterous  and  degrading  doc- 
trine that  slavery  was  the  first  condition  of  labor.  It 
assumes  that  the  tendency  of  wages  to  a  minimum  is  the 
nitural  law,  and  seeks  to  abolish  wages ;  it  assumes  that 
the  natural  result  of  competition  is  to  grind  down 
workers,  and  seeks  to  abolish  competition  by  restrictions, 
prohibitions  and  extensions  of  governing  power.  Thus 
mistaking  effects  for  causes,  and  childishly  blaming 
the  stone  for  hitting  it,  it  wastes  strength  in  striving 
for  remedies  that  when  not  worse  are  futile.  Associat- 
ed though  it  is  in  many  places  with  democratic  aspira- 
tion, yet  its  essenca  is  the  same  delusion  to  which  the 
Children  of  Israel  yielded  when  against  the  protest  of 
their  prophet  they  msisted  on  a  king ;  the  delusion 
that  has  everywhere  corrupted  democracies  and  en- 
throned tyrants — that  power  over  the  people  can  be 
used  for  the  benefit  of  the  people ;  that  there  may  be 
devised  machinery  that  through  human  agencies  will 
secure  for  the  management  of  individual  affairs  more 
wisdom  and  more  virtue  than  the  people  themselves 
possess. 

This  superficiality  and  this  tendency  may  be  seen 
in  all  the  phases  of  socialism. 

Take,  for  instance,  protectionism.  What  support 
it  has,  beyond  the  mere  selfish  desire  of  sellers  to 
compel  buyers  to  pay  them  more  than  their  goods  are 
worth,  springs  from  such  superficial  ideas  as  that  pro- 
duction, not  consumption,  is  the  end  of  effort ;  that 
money  is  more  valuable  than  money's  worth,  and  to 
sell  more  pro  ti table  than  to  buy ;  and  above  all  from  a 
desire  to  limit  competition,  springing  from  an  unan- 
alyzing  recognition  of  the  phenomena  that  necessarily 


C6  THE   CONDITIOK   OF   LABOR. 

follow  when  men  who  liave  the  need  to  labor  are 
deprived  by  monopoly  of  access  to  the  natural  and 
indispensable  element  of  all  labor.  Its  methods 
involve  the  idea  that  governments  can  more  wisely 
direct  the  expenditure  of  labor  and  the  investment  of 
capital  than  can  laborers  and  capitalists,  and  that  the 
men  who  control  governments  will  use  this  power  for 
the  general  good  and  not  in  their  own  interests.  They 
tend  to  multiply  officials,  restrict  liberty,  invent  crimes. 
They  promote  perjury,  fraud  and  corruption.  And 
they  would,  were  the  theory  carried  to  its  logical 
conclusion,  destroy  civilization  and  reduce  mankind 
to  savagery. 

Take  trades  unionism.  While  within  narrow  lines 
trades  unionism  promotes  the  idea  of  the  mutuality 
of  interests,  and  often  helps  to  raise  courage  and 
further  political  education,  and  while  it  has  enabled 
limited  bodies  of  workingmen  to  improve  somewhat 
their  condition,  and  gain,  as  it  were,  breathing  space, 
yet  it  takes  no  note  of  the  general  causes  that  deter- 
mine the  conditions  of  labor,  and  strives  for  the  eleva- 
tion of  only  a  small  part  of  the  great  body  by  means 
that  cannot  help  the  rest.  Aiming  at  the  restriction 
of  competition — the  limitation  of  the  right  to  labor, 
its  methods  are  like  those  of  an  army,  which  even 
in  a  righteous  cause  are  subversive  of  liberty  and 
liable  to  abuse,  while  its  weapon,  the  strike,  is 
destructive  in  its  nature,  both  to  combatants  and  non- 
combatants,  being  a  form  of  passive  war.  To  apply 
the  principle  of  trades  unions  to  all  industry,  as  some 
dream  of  doing,  would  be  to  enthrall  men  in  a  caste 
system. 

Or  take  even  such  moderate  measures  as  the  Hmita- 


OPEN   LETTER  TO   POPE   LEO  XlIL  67 

tion  of  working  hours  and  of  the  labor  of  women  and 
children.  They  are  superficial  in  looking  no  further 
than  to  the  eagerness  of  men  and  women  and  little 
children  to  work  unduly,  and  in  proposing  forcibly  to 
restrain  overwork  while  utterly  ignoring  its  cause,  the 
sting  of  poverty  that  forces  human  beings  to  it.  And 
the  methods  by  which  these  restraints  must  be 
enforced,  multiply  officials,  interfere  with  personal 
liberty,  tend  to  corruption,  and  are  liable  to  abuse. 

As  for  thorough  going  socialism,  which  is  the  more 
to  be  honored  as  having  the  courage  of  its  convictions, 
it  would  carry  these  vices  to  full  expression.  Jump- 
ing to  conclusions  without  effort  to  discover  causes,  it 
fails  to  see  that  oppression  does  not  come  from  the 
nature  of  capital,  but  from  the  wrong  that  robs  labor 
of  capital  by  divorcing  it  from  land,  and  that  cre- 
ates a  fictitious  capital  that  is  really  capitalized  monop- 
oly. It  fails  to  see  that  it  would  be  impossible  for 
capital  to  oppress  labor  were  labor  free  to  the  natural 
material  of  production ;  that  the  wage  system  in 
itself  springs  from  mutual  convenience,  being  a  form 
of  co-operation  in  which  one  of  the  parties  prefers  a 
certain  to  a  contingent  result ;  and  that  what  it  calls 
the  "iron  law  of  wages"  is  not  the  natural  law  of 
wages,  but  only  the  law  of  wages  in  that  unnatural 
condition  in  which  men  are  made  helpless  by  being 
deprived  of  the  materials  for  life  and  work.  It  fails 
to  see  that  what  it  mistakes  for  the  evils  of  competi- 
tion are  really  the  evils  of  restricted  competition — 
are  due  to  a  one  sided  competition  to  which  men 
are  forced  when  deprived  of  land.  While  its  meth- 
ods, the  organization  of  men  into  industrial  armies, 
the  direction  and  control  of  all  production  and   ex- 


68  THE   CONDITION  OF   LABOR, 

change  bj  governmental  or  semi-governmental  bu- 
reaus, would,  if  carried  to  full  expression,  mean 
Egyptian  despotism. 

We  differ  from  the  socialists  in  our  diagnosis  of  the 
evil  and  we  differ  from  them  as  to  remedies.  "We  have 
no  fear  of  capital,  regarding  it  as  the  natural  hand- 
maiden of  labor;  we  look  on  interest  in  itself  as 
natural  and  just ;  we  would  set  no  limit  to  accumula- 
tion, nor  impose  on  the  rich  any  burden  that  is  not 
equally  placed  on  the  poor ;  we  see  no  evil  in  com- 
petition, but  deem  unrestricted  competition  to  be  as 
necessary  to  the  health  of  the  industrial  and  social 
organism  as  the  free  circulation  of  the  blood  is  to  the 
health  of  the  bodily  organism — to  be  the  agency  where- 
by the  fullest  co-operation  is  to  be  secured.  We  would 
simply  take  for  the  community  what  belongs  to  the 
community,  the  value  that  attaches  to  land  by  the 
growth  of  the  community ;  leave  sacredly  to  the  indi- 
vidual all  that  belongs  to  the  individual ;  and,  treat- 
ing necessary  monopolies  as  functions  of  the  state, 
abolish  all  restrictions  and  prohibitions  save  those 
required  for  public  health,  safety,  morals  and  con- 
venience. 

But  the  fundamental  difference — the  difference  I 
ask  your  Holiness  specially  to  note,  is  in  this  :  socialism 
in  all  its  phases  looks  on  the  evils  of  our  civilization  as 
springing  from  the  inadequacy  or  inharmony  of 
natural  relations,  which  must  be  artificially  organized 
or  improved.  In  its  idea  there  devolves  on  the  state 
the  necessity  of  intelligently  organizing  the  industrial 
relations  of  men ;  the  construction,  as  it  were,  of  a  great 
machine  whose  complicated  parts  shalJ  properly  work 
together  under  the  direction  of  human  intelligence. 


OPEN   LETTER   TO   POPE    LEO   XIII.  69 

This  is  the  reason  why  socialism  tends  towards  atheism. 
Failing  to  see  the  order  and  symmetry  of  natm*al  law, 
it  fails  to  recognize  God. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  who  call  om^elves  single  tax 
men  (a  name  which  expresses  merely  our  practical 
propositions)  see  in  the  social  and  industrial  relations 
of  men  not  a  machine  which  requires  construction, 
but  an  organism  which  needs  only  to  be  suffered  to 
grow.  We  see  in  the  natural  social  and  industrial 
laws  such  harmony  as  we  see  in  the  adjustments  of  the 
human  body,  and  that  as  far  transcends  the  power  of 
man's  intelligence  to  order  and  direct  as  it  is  beyond 
man's  intelligence  to  order  and  direct  the  vital  move- 
ments of  his  frame.  We  see  in  these  social  and  indus- 
trial laws  so  close  a  relation  to  the  moral  law  as  must 
spring  from  the  same  Authorship,  and  that  proves  the 
moral  law  to  be  the  sure  guide  of  man  where  his  intelli- 
gence would  wander  and  go  astray.  Thus,  to  us,  all  that 
is  needed  to  remedy  the  evils  of  our  time  is  to  do  justice 
and  give  freedom.  This  is  the  reason  why  our  beliefs 
tend  towards,  uay  are  indeed  the  only  beliefs  consistent 
with  a  iirm  and  reverent  faith  in  God,  and  with  the 
recognition  of  His  law  as  the  supreme  law  which  men 
must  follow  if  they  would  secure  prosperity  and  avoid 
destruction.  This  is  the  reason  why  to  us  political 
economy  only  serves  to  show  the  depth  of  wisdom 
in  the  simple  truths  which  common  people  heard 
gladly  from  the  lips  of  Him  of  whom  it  was  said  \vith 
wonder,  "  Is  not  this  the  Carpenter  of  Xazareth  'i " 

And  it  is  because  that  in  what  we  propose — the 
S3curing  to  all  men  of  equal  nat aral  opportunities  for 
the  exercise  of  their  powers  and  the  removal  of  all 
legal  restriction  on  the  legitimate  exercise  of  those 


70  THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

powers — we  see  the  conformation  of  human  law  to  the 
moral  law,  that  we  hold  with  confidence  not  merely 
that  this  is  the  "sufficient  remedj  for  all  the  evils  you 
so  strikingly  portray,  but  that  it  is  the  only  possible 
remedy. 

I^or  is  there  any  other.  The  organization  of  man 
is  such,  his  relations  to  the  world  in  which  he  is  placed 
are  such — that  is  to  say,  the  immutable  laws  of  God 
are  such,  that  it  is  beyond  the  power  of  human  in- 
genuity to  devise  any  way  by  which  the  evils  born  of 
the  injustice  that  robs  men  of  their  birthright  can  be 
removed  otherwise  than  by  doing  justice,  by  opening 
to  all  the  bounty  that  God  has  provided  for  all. 

Since  man  can  live  only  on  land  and  from  land, 
since  land  is  the  reservoir  of  matter  and  force  from 
which  man's  body  itself  is  taken,  and  on  which  he  must 
draw  for  all  that  he  can  produce,  does  it  not  irresistibly 
follow  that  to  give  the  land  in  ownership  to  some  men 
and  to  deny  to  others  all  right  to  it  is  to  divide  man- 
kind into  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  privileged  and  the 
helpless  ?  Does  it  not  follow  that  those  who  have  no 
rights  to  the  use  of  land  can  live  only  by  selling  their 
power  to  labor  to  those  who  own  the  land  ?  Does  it 
not  follow  that  what  the  socialists  call  "  the  iron  law 
ot  wages,"  what  the  political  economists  term  "the 
tendency  of  wages  to  a  minimum,"  must  take  from  the 
landless  masses — the  mere  laborers,  who  of  themselves 
have  no  power  to  use  their  labor — all  the  benefits  of 
any  possible  advance  or  improvement  that  does  not 
alter  this  unjust  division  of  land.  For  having  no 
power  to  employ  themselves,  they  must,  either  as 
labor  sellers  or  land  renters,  compete  with  one  another 
for  permission  to  labor.     This  competition  with  one 


OPEN   LETTEK   TO   POPE    LEO   XIII.  71 

another  of  men  shut  out  from  God's  inexhaustible  store- 
house has  no  limit  but  starvation,  and  must  ultimately 
force  wages  to  their  lowest  point,  the  point  at  which 
life  can  just  be*  maintained  and  reproduction  carried 
on. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  all  wages  must  fall  to  this 
point,  but  that  the  wages  of  that  necessarily  largest 
stratum  of  laborers  who  have  only  ordinary  knowledge, 
skill  and  aptitude  must  so  fall.  The  wages  of 
special  classes,  who  are  fenced  off  from  the  pressure  of 
competition  by  peculiar  knowledge,  skill  or  other 
causes,  may  remain  above  that  ordinary  level.  Thus, 
where  the  ability  to  read  and  write  is  rare  its  posses- 
sion enables  a  man  to  obtain  higher  wages  than  the 
ordinary  laborer.  But  as  the  diffusion  of  education 
makes  the  ability  to  read  and  write  general  this 
advantage  is  lost.  So  when  a  vocation  requires  special 
training  or  skill,  or  is  made  difficult  of  access  by 
artificial  restrictions,  the  checking  of  competition  tends 
to  keep  wages  in  it  at  a  higher  level.  But  as  the  prog- 
ress ot  invention  dispenses  with  peculiar  skill,  or 
artificial  restrictions  are  broken  down,  these  higher 
wages  sink  to  the  ordinary  level.  And  so,  it  is  only 
so  long  as  they  are  special  that  such  quahties  as  indus- 
try, prudence  and  thrift  can  enable  the  ordinary  laborer 
to  maintain  a  condition  above  that  which  gives  a  mere 
living.  Where  they  become  general,  the  law  of 
competition  must  reduce  the  earnings  or  savings  of  such 
qualities  to  the  general  level — which,  land  being 
monopolized  and  labor  helpless,  can  be  only  that  at 
which  the  next  lowest  point  is  the  cessation  of  life. 

Or,  to  state  the  same  thing  in  another  way :     Land 
being  necessary  to  life  and  labor,  its  owuers  will  be 


72  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

able,  in  return  for  permission  to  use  it,  to  obtain 
from  mere  laborers  all  that  labor  can  produce,  save 
enough  to  enable  such  of  them  to  maintain  life  as  are 
wanted  by  the  land  owners  and  their  dependents. 

Thus,  where  private  property  in  land  has  divided 
society  into  a  land  owning  class  and  a  landless  class, 
there  is  no  possible  invention  or  improvement, 
whether  it  be  industrial,  social  or  moral,  which,  so 
long  as  it  does  not  affect  the  ownership  of  land,  can 
prevent  poverty  or  relieve  the  general  conditions  of 
mere  laborers.  For  whether  the  effect  of  any  inven- 
tion or  improvement  be  to  increase  what  labor  can 
produce  or  to  decrease  what  is  required  to  support  the 
laborer,  it  can,  so  soon  as  it  becomes  general,  result 
only  in  increasing  the  income  of  the  owners  of  land, 
without  at  all  benefiting  the  mere  laborers.  In  no 
event  can  those  possessed  of  the  mere  ordinary  power 
to  labor,  a  power  utterly  useless  without  the  means 
necessary  to  labor,  keep  more  of  their  earnings  than 
enough  to  enable  them  to  live. 

How  true  this  is  we  may  see  in  the  facts  of  to-day. 
In  our  own  time  invention  and  discovery  have  enor- 
mously increased  the  productive  power  of  labor,  and  at 
the  same  time  greatly  reduced  the  cost  of  many  things 
necessary  to  the  support  of  the  laborer.  Have  these 
improvements  anywhere  raised  the  earnings  of  the 
mere  laborer  ?  Have  not  their  benefits  mainly  gone 
to  the  owners  of  land — enormously  increased  land 
values  ? 

I  say  mainly,  for  some  part  of  the  benefit  has  gone 
to  the  cost  of  monstrous  standing  armies  and  warlike 
preparations ;  to  the  payment  of  interest  on  great  public 
debts;  and,  largely  disguised  as  interest  on  fictitious 


OPEN   LETTEB   TO   POPE    LEO   XIII.  73 

capital,  to  the  owners  of  monopoKes  other  than  that  of 
land.  But  improvements  that  would  do  away  with 
these  wastes  would  not  benefit  labor ;  they  would  sim- 
ply increase  the  profits  of  land  owners.  Were  stand- 
ing armies  and  all  their  incidents  abohshed,  were  all 
monopolies  other  than  that  of  land  done  away  with, 
were  governments  to  become  models  of  economy, 
were  the  profits  of  speculators,  of  middlemen,  of  all 
sorts  of  exchangers  saved,  were  every  one  to  become 
so  strictly  honest  that  no  policemen,  no  courts,  no 
prisons,  no  precautions  against  dishonesty  would  be 
needed — the  result  would  not  differ  from  that  which 
has  followed  the  increase  of  productive  power. 

Nay,  would  not  these  very  blessings  bring  starva- 
tion to  many  of  those  who  now  manage  to  live  ?  Is  it 
not  true  that  if  there  were  proposed  to-day,  what  all 
Christian  men  ought  to  pray  for,  the  complete  dis- 
bandment  of  all  the  armies  of  Europe,  the  greatest 
fears  would  be  aroused  for  the  consequences  of  throw- 
ing on  the  labor  market  so  many  unemployed 
laborers  ? 

The  explanation  of  this  and  of  similar  paradoxes 
that  in  our  time  perplex  on  every  side  may  be  easily 
S3en.  The  effect  of  all  inventions  and  improvements 
that  increase  productive  power,  that  save  waste  and 
economize  effort,  is  to  lessen  the  labor  required  for  a 
given  result,  and  thus  to  save  labor,  so  that  we  speak 
of  them  as  labor  saving'  inventions  or  improvements. 
Kow,  in  a  natural  state  of  society  where  the  rights  of 
all  to  the  use  of  the  earth  are  acknowledged,  labor 
saving  improvements  might  go  to  the  very  utmost 
that  can  be  imagined  without  lessening  the  demand 
for  men,  since  in  such  natural  conditions  the  demand 


74  THE    CONDITION   OF    LABOR. 

for  men  lies  in  their  own  enjoyment  of  life  and  the 
strong  instincts  that  the  Creator  has  implanted  in 
tlie  human  breast.  But  in  that  unnatural  state  of 
society  where  the  masses  of  men  are  disinherited  of 
all  but  the  power  to  labor  when  opportunity  to  labor 
is  given  them  by  others,  there  the  demand  for  them 
becomes  simply  the  demand  for  their  services  by  those 
who  hold  this  opportunity,  and  man  himself  becomes 
a  commodity.  Hence,  although  the  natural  effect  of 
labor  saving  improvement  is  to  increase  wages,  yet  in 
the  unnatural  condition  which  private  ownership  of 
the  land  begets,  the  effect,  even  of  such  moral  im- 
provements as  the  disbandment  of  armies  and  the  sav- 
ing of  the  labor  that  vice  entails,  is  by  lessening  the 
commercial  demand,  to  lower  wages  and  reduce  mere 
laborers  to  starvation  or  pauperism.  If  labor  saving 
inventions  and  improvements  could  be  carried  to  the 
very  abolition  of  the  necessity  for  labor,  what  would 
be  the  result?  Would  it  not  be  that  land  owners 
could  then  get  all  the  wealth  that  the  land  was 
capable  of  producing,  and  would  have  no  need  at  all 
for  laborers,  who  must  then  either  starve  or  live  as 
pensioners  on  the  bounty  of  the  land  owners  ? 

Thus,  so  long  as  private  property  in  land  continu3.5 
— so  long  as  some  men  ara  treated  as  owners  of  the 
earth  and  other  men  can  live  on  it  only  by  their  suffer- 
ance— human  wisdom  can  devise  no  means  by  which 
the  evils  of  our  present  condition  may  be  avoided. 

Nor  yet  could  the  wisdom  of  God. 

By  the  light  of  that  right  reason  of  which  St. 
Thomas  speaks  we  may  see  that  even  He,  the  Al- 
mighty, so  long  as  His  laws  remain  what  they  are, 


OPEN  LETTEK  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         76 

could  do  nothing  to  prevent  poverty  and  starvation 
while  property  in  land  continues. 

How  could  He  ?  Should  he  infuse  new  vigor  into 
the  sunlight,  new  virtue  into  the  air,  new  fertility 
into  the  soil,  would  not  all  this  new  bounty  go  to  the 
owners  of  the  land,  and  work  not  benefit,  but  rather 
injury,  to  mere  laborers  ?  Should  He  open  the  minds 
of  men  to  the  possibilities  of  new  substances,  new  ad- 
justments, new  powers,  could  this  do  any  more  to 
relieve  poverty  than  steam,  electricity  and  all  the  num- 
berless discoveries  and  inventions  of  our  time  have 
done  ?  Or,  if  He  were  to  send  down  from  the  heavens 
above  or  cause  to  gush  up  from  the  subterranean 
depths,  food,  clothing,  all  the  things  that  satisfy  man's 
material  desires,  to  whom  under  our  laws  would  all 
these  belong  ?  So  far  from  benefiting  man,  would  not 
this  increase  and  extension  of  His  bounty  prove  but  a 
curse,  enabling  the  privileged  class  more  riotously 
to  roll  in  wealth,  and  bringing  the  disinherited  class 
to  more  widespread  starvation  or  pauperism  ? 


lY. 

Believing  that  the  social  question  is  at  bottom  a 
religious  question,  we  deem  it  of  happy  augury  to  the 
world  that  in  your  Encyclical  the  most  influential  of  all 
religious  teachers  has  directed  attention  to  the  condi- 
tion of  labor. 

But  while  we  appreciate  the  many  wholesome 
truths  you  utter,  while  we  feel,  as  all  must  feel,  that 
you  are  animated  by  a  desire  to  help  the  suffering  and 
oppressed,  and  to  put  an  end  to  any  idea  that  the 
Church  is  divorced  from  the  aspiration  for  liberty  and 


76  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOK. 

progress,  yet  it  is  painfully  obvious  to  us  that  one 
fatal  assumption  hides  from  you  the  cause  of  the  evils 
you  see,  and  makes  it  impossible  for  you  to  propose 
any  adecjuate  remedy.  This  assumption  is,  that  pri- 
vate propsrty  in  land  is  of  the  same  nature  and  has 
the  same  sanctions  as  private  property  in  things  pro- 
duced by  labor.  In  spite  of  its  undeniable  truths  and 
its  benevolent  spirit,  your  Encyclical  shows  you  to  be 
involved  in  such  difficulties  as  a  physician  called  to 
examine  one  suffering  from  disease  of  the  stomach 
would  meet  should  he  begin  with  a  refusal  to  consider 
the  stomach. 

Prevented  by  this  assumption  from  seeing  the  true 
cause,  the  only  causes  you  find  it  possible  to  assign  for 
the  growth  of  misery  and  wretchedness  are  the  destruc- 
tion of  workingmen's  guilds  in  the  last  century,  the 
repudiation  in  public  institutions  and  laws  of  the 
ancient  religion,  rapacious  usury,  the  custom  of  work- 
ing by  contract,  and  the  concentration  of  trade. 

Such  diagnosis  is  manifestly  inadequate  to  account 
for  evils  that  are  alike  felt  in  Catholic  countries,  in 
Protestant  countries,  in  countries  that  adhere  to  the 
Greek  communion  and  in  countries  where  no  religion 
is  professed  by  the  state ;  that  are  alike  felt  in  old 
countries  and  in  new  countries;  where  industry  is 
simple  and  where  it  is  most  elaborate  ;  and  amid  all 
varieties  of  industrial  customs  and  relations. 

iiut  the  real  cause  will  be  clear  if  you  will  consider 
that  since  labor  must  find  its  workshop  and  resenoir 
in  land,  the  labor  question  is  but  another  name  for  the 
land  question,  and  will  re-examine  your  assumption 
that  private  property  in  land  is  necessary  and  right. 

See  how  fully  adequate  is  the  cause  I  have  pointed 


OPEN   LETTER  TO   POPE   LEO   XTTl.  Y7 

out.  Tbs  most  important  of  all  the  material  relations 
of  man  is  his  relation  to  the  planet  he  inhabits,  and 
hence,  the  "  impious  resistance  to  the  benevolent  inten- 
tions of  his  Creator,"  which,  as  Bishop  Nulty  says,  is 
involved  in  private  property  in  land,  must  produce 
evils  wherever  it  exists.  But  by  virtue  of  tlie  law, 
"  unto  whom  much  is  given,  from  him  much  is  required," 
the  very  progress  of  civilization  makes  the  evils  pro- 
duced by  private  property  in  land  more  widespread 
and  intense. 

What  is  producing  throughout  the  civilized  world 
that  condition  of  things  you  rightly  describe  as  intoler- 
able is  not  this  and  that  local  eiTor  or  minor  mistake. 
It  is  nothing  less  than  the  progress  of  civilization  itself ; 
nothing  less  than  the  intellectual  advance  and  the  ma- 
terial growth  in  which  our  century  has  been  so 
pre-eminent,  acting  in  a  state  of  society  based  on  private 
property  in  land  ;  nothing  less  than  the  new  gifts  that 
in  our  time  God  has  been  showering  on  man,  but 
which  are  being  turned  into  scourges  by  man's  "  im- 
pious resistance  to  the  benevolent  intention  of  his 
Creator." 

The  discoveries  of  science,  the  gains  of  invention 
have  given  to  us  in  this  wonderful  century  more  than 
has  been  given  to  men  in  any  time'  before  ;  and,  in  a 
degree  so  rapidly  accelerating  as  to  suggest  geometrical 
progression,  are  placing  in  our  hands  new  material 
powers.  But  with  the  benefit  comes  the  obligation. 
In  a  civilization  beginning  to  pulse  with  steam  and 
electricity,  where  the  sun  paints  pictures  and  the  phono- 
graph stores  speech,  it  will  not  do  to  be  merely  as  just 
as  were  our  fathers.  Intellectual  advance  and  material 
advance  require  corresponding  moral  advance.   Knowl- 


(8  THE   CONMTiuK   Of   LA^OtL. 

edge  and  power  are  neither  good  nor  evil.  They  are 
not  ends  but  means — evolving  forces  that  if  not  con- 
trolled in  orderly  relations  must  take  disorderly  and 
destructive  forms.  The  deepening  pain,  the  increasing 
perplexity,  the  growing  discontent  for  which,  as  you 
truly  say,  so/ne  remedy  rrmst  he  found  and  quickly 
found^  mean  nothing  less  than  that  forces  of  destruction 
swifter  and  more  terrible  than  those  that  have  shattered 
Q'veY^  preceding  civilization  are  already  menacing  ours 
— that  if  it  does  not  quickly  rise  to  a  higher  moral  level ; 
if  it  does  not  become  in  deed  as  in  word  a  Christian 
civilization,  on  the  wall  of  its  splendor  must  flame  the 
doom  of  Babylon  :  "  Thou  art  weighed  in  the  balance 
and  found  wanti^^g !  " 

One  false  assumption  prevents  you  from  seeing 
the  real  cause  and  true  significance  of  the  facts 
that  have  prompted  your  Encyclical.  And  it  fatally 
fetters  you  when  you  seek  a  remedy. 

You  state  that  you  approach  the  subject  with  confi- 
dence, yet  in  all  that  greater  part  of  the  Encyclical 
(19-67)  devoted  to  the  remedy,  while  there  is  an 
abundance  of  moral  reflections  and  injunctions, 
excellent  in  themselves  but  dead  and  meaningless 
as  you  apply  them,  the  only  definite  practical 
proposals  for  the  improvement  of  the  condition  of 
labor  are : 

1.  That  the  State  should  step  in  to  prevent  over- 
work, to  restrict  the  employment  of  women  ana 
children,  to  secure  in  workshops  conditions  not  un- 
favorable to  health  and  morals,  and,  at  least  where 
there  is  danger  of  insufiicient  wages  provoking  strikes, 
to  regulate  wages  (39-40). 


OPElf    LfiTtEil  TO   POPE    LfiO   Xllt.  79 

2.  That  it  sliould  encourage  the  acquisition  of 
property  (in  land)  by  workingmen  (50-51). 

3.  That  workingmen's  associations  should  be 
formed  (52-67). 

These  remedies  so  far  as  they  go  are  socialistic, 
and  though  the  Encyclical  is  not  without  recognition 
of  the  individual  character  of  man  and  of  the  priority 
of  the  individual  and  the  family  to  the  state,  yet  the 
whole  tendency  and  spirit  of  its  remedial  suggestions 
lean  unmistakably  to  socialism — extremely  moderate 
socialism  it  is  true ;  socialism  hampered  and  emas- 
culated by  a  supreme  respect  for  private  possessions ; 
yet  socialism  still.  But,  although  you  frequently  use 
the  ambiguous  term  "  private  property  "  when  the  con- 
text shows  that  you  have  in  mind  private  property  in 
land,  the  one  thing  clear  on  the  surface  and  becom- 
ing clearer  still  with  examination  is  that  you  insist 
that  whatever  else  may  be  done,  the  private  owner- 
ship of  land  shall  be  left  untouched. 

I  have  already  referred  generally  to  the  defects 
that  attach  to  all  socialistic  remedies  for  the  evil  con- 
dition of  labor,  but  respect  for  your  Holiness  dictates 
that  I  should  speak  specifically,  even  though  briefly, 
of  the  remedies  proposed  or  suggested  by  you. 

Of  these,  the  widest  and  strongest  are  that  the 
state  should  restrict  the  hours  of  labor,  the  employ- 
ment of  women  and  children,  the  unsanitary  condi- 
tions of  workshops,  etc.  Yet  how  little  may  in  this 
way  be  accomplished. 

A  strong,  absolute  ruler  might  hope  by  such  regula- 
tions to  alleviate  the  conditions  of  chattel  slaves.  But 
the  tendency  of  our  times  is  towards  democracy,  and 


80  THE   CONDITION   OP  LABOR. 

deinoeratic  states  are  necessarily  weaker  in  paternal* 
ism,  while  in  the  industrial  slavery,  growing  out  of 
private  ownership  of  land,  that  prevails  in  Christen- 
dom to-day,  it  is  not  the  master  who  forces  the  slave 
to  labor,  but  the  slave  who  urges  the  master  to  let 
him  labor.  Thus  the  greatest  difficulty  in  enforcing 
such  regulations  comes  from  those  whom  they  are  in- 
tended to  benefit.  It  is  not,  for  instance,  the  masters 
who  make  it  difficult  to  enforce  restrictions  on  child 
labor  in  factories,  but  the  mothers,  who,  prompted  by 
poverty,  misrepresent  the  ages  of  their  children  even 
to  the  misters,  and  teach  the  children  to  misrepresent. 

But  while  in  large  factories  and  mines  regulations 
as  to  hours,  ages,  etc.,  though  subject  to  evasion  and 
offering  opportunities  for  extortion  and  corruption, 
may  be  to  some  extent  enforced,  how  can  they  have 
any  effect  in  those  far  wider  branches  of  industry 
where  the  laborer  works  for  himself  or  for  small 
employers  ? 

All  such  remedies  are  of  the  nature  of  the  remedy 
for  overcrowding  that  is  generally  prescribed  with 
them — the  restriction  under  penalty  of  the  number 
who  may  occupy  a  room  and  the  demolition  of  unsani- 
tary buildings.  Since  these  measures  have  no  ten- 
dency to  increase  house  accommodation  or  to  augment 
ability  to  pay  for  it,  the  overcrowding  that  is  forced 
back  in  some  places  goes  on  in  other  places  and  to  a 
worse  degree.  All  such  remedies  begin  at  the  wrong 
end.  They  are  like  putting  on  brake  and  bit  to  hold 
in  quietness  horses  that  are  being  lashed  into  frenzy ; 
they  are  like  trying  to  stop  a  locomotive  by  holding 
its  wheels  instead  of  shutting  oif  steam  ;  like  attempt- 
ing to  cure   smallpox  by  driving  back  its  pustules. 


OPEN   LETTER  TO  POPE   LEO  XIII.  81 

Men  do  not  overwork  themselves  because  they  like 
it ;  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  the  mother's  heart  to 
send  children  to  work  when  they  ought  to  be  at  play ; 
it  is  not  of  choice  that  laborers  will  work  in  dangerous 
and  unsanitary  conditions.  These  things,  like  over- 
crowding, come  from  the  sting  of  poverty.  And  so 
long  as  the  poverty  of  which  they  are  the  ex- 
pression is  left  untouched,  restrictions  such  as  you 
endorse  can  have  only  partial  and  evanescent  results. 
The  cause  remaining,  repression  in  one  place  can  only 
bring  out  its  effects  in  other  places,  and  the  task  you 
assign  to  the  state  is  as  hopeless  as  to  ask  it  to  lower 
the  level  of  the  ocean  by  bailing  out  the  sea. 

Nor  can  the  state  cure  poverty  by  regulating 
wages.  It  is  as  much  beyond  the  power  of  the 
state  to  regrulate  wages  as  it  is  to  regulate  the  rates  of 
interest.  Usury  laws  have  been  tried  again  and 
again,  but  the  only  effect  they  have  ever  had  has 
been  to  increase  what  the  poorer  borrowers  must  pay, 
and  for  the  same  reasons  that  all  attempts  to  lower 
by  regulation  the  price  of  goods  have  always  resulted 
merely  in  increasing  them.  The  general  rate  of 
wages  is  fixed  by  the  ease  or  difficulty  with  which 
labor  can  obtain  access  to  land,  ranging  from  the  full 
earnings  of  labor,  where  land  is  free,  to  the  least  on 
which  laborers  can  live  and  reproduce,  where  land  is 
fully  monopolized.  Thus,  where  it  has  been  com- 
paratively easy  for  laborers  to  get  land,  as  in  the 
United  States  and  in  Australasia,  wages  have  been 
higher  than  in  Europe  and  it  has  been  impossible  to 
get  European  laborers  to  work  there  for  wages  that 
they  would  gladly  accept  at  home ;  while  as  monopoli- 
zation goes  on  under  the  influence  of  private  property 


82  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

in  land,  wages  tend  to  fall,  and  the  social  conditions  of 
Europe  to  appear.  Thus,  under  the  partial  yet  sub- 
stantial recognition  of  common  rights  to  land,  of  which 
I  have  spoken,  the  many  attempts  of  the  British 
parliaments  to  reduce  wages  by  regulation  failed 
utterly.  And  so,  when  the  institution  of  private 
property  in  land  had  done  its  work  in  England,  all 
attempts  of  Parliament  to  raise  wages  proved  unavail- 
ing. In  the  beginning  of  this  century  it  was  even 
attempted  to  increase  the  earnings  of  laborers  by 
grants  in  aid  of  wages.  But  the  only  result  was  to 
lower  commensurately  what  wages  employers  paid. 

The  state  could  only  maintain  wages  above  the  ten- 
dency of  the  market  (for  as  I  have  shown  labor  de- 
prived of  land  becomes  a  commodity),  by  offering 
employment  to  all  who  wish  it ;  or  by  lending  its 
sanction  to  strikes  and  supporting  them  with  its 
funds.  Thus  it  is,  that  the  thorough  going  social- 
ists who  want  the  state  to  take  all  industry  into  its 
hands  are  much  more  logical  than  those  timid  social- 
ists who  propose  that  the  state  should  regulate  private 
industry — but  only  a  little. 

The  same  hopelessness  attends  your  suggestion  that 
working  people  should  be  encouraged  by  the  state 
in  obtaining  a  share  of  the  land.  It  is  evident  that 
by  this  you  mean  that,  as  is  now  being  attempted 
in  Ireland,  the  state  shall  buy  out  large  land  owners 
in  favor  of  small  ones,  establishing  what  is  known  as 
peasant  proprietors.  Supposing  that  this  can  be  done 
even  to  a  considerable  extent,  what  will  be  ac- 
complislied  save  to  substitute  a  larger  privileged  class 
for  a  smaller  privileged  class  ?    What  will  be  done  for 


OPEN  LETTEE  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.        83 

the  still  larger  class  that  must  remain,  the  laborers  of 
the  agricultural  districts,  the  workmen  of  the  towns, 
the  proletai'ians  of  the  cities  ?  Is  it  not  true,  as  Pro- 
fessor De  Lareleye  says,  that  in  such  countries  as 
Belgium,  where  peasant  proprietary  exists,  the  tenants, 
for  there  still  exist  tenants,  are  rackrented  with  a 
mercilessness  imknown  in  Ireland  ?  Is  it  not  true 
that  in  such  countries  as  Belgium  the  condition  of  the 
mere  laborer  is  even  worse  than  it  is  in  Great  Britain, 
where  large  ownerships  obtain?  And  if  the  state 
attempts  to  buy  up  land  for  peasant  proprietors  will 
not  the  effect  be,  what  is  seen  to-day  in  Ireland,  to  in- 
crease the  market  value  of  land  and  thus  make  it  more 
difficult  for  those  not  so  favored,  and  for  those  who 
will  come  after,  to  get  land  ?  How,  moreover,  on  the 
principle  which  you  declare  (36),  that  "  to  the  state 
the  interests  of  all  are  equal,  whether  high  or  low," 
will  you  justify  state  aid  to  one  man  to  buy  a  bit  of 
land  without  also  insisting  on  state  aid  to  another 
man  to  buy  a  donkey,  to  another  to  buy  a  shop,  to 
another  to  buy  the  tools  and  materials  of  a  trade — 
state  aid  in  short  to  everybody  who  may  be  able  to 
make  good  use  of  it  or  thinks  that  he  could  ?  And 
are  you  not  thus  landed  in  communism — not  the  com- 
munism of  the  early  Christians  and  of  the  religious 
orders,  but  communism  that  uses  the  coercive  power 
of  the  state  to  take  rightful  property  by  force  from 
those  who  have,  to  give  to  those  who  have  not? 
For  the  state  has  no  purse  of  Fortunatus ;  the  state 
cannot  repeat  the  miracle  of  the  loaves  and  fishes ; 
all  that  the  state  can  give,  it  must  get  by  some  form 
or  other  of  the  taxing  power.  And  whether  it  gives 
or  lends  money,  or  gives  or  lends  credit,  it  cannot  give 


84:  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

to  those  who  have  not,  without  taking  from  those  who 
have. 

But  aside  from  all  this,  any  scheme  of  dividing  up 
laad  while  maintaining  private  property  in  land  is 
futile.  Small  holdings  cannot  co-exist  with  the  treat- 
ment of  land  as  private  property  where  civilization  is 
materially  advancing  and  wealth  augments.  We  may 
S3e  this  in  the  economic  tendencies  that  in  ancient 
times  were  the  main  cause  that  transformed  world- 
conquering  Italy  from  a  land  of  small  farms  to  a  land 
of  great  estates.  We  may  see  it  in  the  fact  that  while 
two  centuries  ago  the  majority  of  English  farmers 
were  owners  of  the  land  they  tilled,  tenancy  has  been 
for  a  long  time  the  all  but  universal  condition  of  the 
English  farmer.  And  now  the  mighty  forces  of  steam 
and  electricity  have  come  to  urge  concentration.  It  is 
in  the  United  States  that  we  may  see  on  the  largest 
scale  how  their  power  is  opsratiug  to  turn  a  nation  of 
land  owners  into  a  nation  of  tenants.  The  principle  is 
clear  and  irresistible.  Material  progress  makes  land 
more  valuable,  and  when  this  increasing  value  is  left 
to  private  owners  land  must  pass  from  the  ownership 
of  the  poor  into  the  ownership  of  the  rich,  just  as  dia- 
monds so  pass  when  poor  men  find  them.  What  the 
British  government  is  attempting  in  Ireland  is  to 
build  snow  houses  in  the  Arabian  desert !  to  plant 
bananas  in  Labrador ! 

There  is  one  way,  and  only  one  way,  in  which 
working  people  in  our  civilizatioii  may  be  secured  a 
share  in  the  land  of  their  country,  and  that  is  the  way 
that  we  propose — the  taking  of  the  profits  of  land 
ownership  for  the  community. 


OPEN   LEITEE   TO    POPE   LEO   XIII.  85 

As  to  workingmen's  associations,  what  your  Holi- 
ness seems  to  contemplate  is  the  formation  and  encour- 
agement of  societies  akin  to  the  Catholic  sodalities, 
and  to  the  friendly  and  beneficial  societies,  like  the 
Odd  Fellows,  which  have  had  a  large  extension  in 
English  speaking  countries.  Such  associations  may 
promote  fraternity,  extend  social  intercourse  and  pro- 
vide assurance  in  case  of  sickness  or  death,  but  if  they 
go  no  further  they  are  powerless  to  affect  wages  even 
among  their  members.  As  to  trades  unions  proper,  it 
is  hard  to  define  your  position,  which  is,  perhaps,  best 
stated  as  one  of  warm  approbation  provided  that  they 
do  not  go  too  far.  For  while  you  object  to  strikes ; 
while  you  reprehend  societies  that  "  do  their  best  to  get 
into  their  hands  the  whole  field  of  labor  and  to  force 
workingmen  either  to  join  them  or  to  starve ;"  while 
you  discountenance  the  coercing  of  employers  and 
seem  to  think  that  arbitration  might  take  the  place  of 
strikes ;  yet  you  use  expressions  and  assert  principles 
that  are  all  that  the  trade  unionist  would  -ask,  not 
merely  to  justify  the  strike  and  the  boycott,  but  even 
the  use  of  violence  where  only  violence  would  suffice. 
For  you  speak  of  the  insufficient  wages  of  workmen 
as  due  to  the  greed  of  rich  employers ;  you  assume  the 
moral  right  of  the  workman  to  obtain  employment 
from  others  at  wages  greater  than  those  others  are  will- 
ing freely  to  give  ;  and  you  deny  the  right  of  any  one  to 
work  for  such  wages  as  he  pleases,  in  such  a  way  as 
to  lead  Mr.  Stead,  in  so  widely  read  a  journal  as  the 
Review  of  Reviews.,  to  approvingly  declare  that  you 
regard  "  blacklegging,"  i.  e.,  the  working  for  less  than 
union  wages,  as  a  crime. 

To  men  conscious  of  bitter  injustice,  to  men  steeped 


86  THE    CONDITION    OF   LABOR. 

in  poverty  yet  mocked  by  flaunting  wealth,  such  wordo 
mean  more  than  I  can  think  you  realize. 

When  fire  shall  be  cool  and  ice  be  warm,  when 
armies  shall  throw  away  lead  and  iron,  to  try  con- 
clusions by  the  pelting  of  rose  leaves,  such  labor 
associations  as  you  are  thinking  of  may  be  possible. 
But  not  till  then.  For  labor  associations  can  do 
nothing  to  raise  wages  but  by  force.  It  may  be  force 
applied  passively,  or  force  applied  actively,  or  force 
held  in  reserve,  but  it  must  be  force.  They  must 
coerce  or  hold  the  power  to  coerce  employers ;  they 
•must  coerce  those  among  their  own  members  dis- 
posed to  straggle  ;  they  must  do  their  best  to  get  into 
their  hands  the  whole  field  of  labor  they  seek  tp 
occupy  and  to  force  other  workingmen  either  t j  join 
them  or  to  starve.  Those  who  tell  you  of  trades 
unions  bent  on  raising  wages  by  moral  suasion  alone 
are  like  those  who  would  tell  you  of  tigers  that  live 
on  oranges. 

The  condition  of  the  masses  to-day  is  that  of  men 
pressed  together  in  a  hall  where  ingress  is  open  and 
more  are  constantly  coming,  but  where  the  doors  for 
egress  are  closed.  If  forbidden  to  relieve  the  gen- 
eral pressure  by  throwing  open  those  doors,  whose 
bars  and  bolts  are  private  property  in  land,  they  can 
only  mitigate  the  pressure  on  themselves  by  forcing 
back  others,  and  the  weakest  must  be  driven  to  the 
wall.  This  is  the  way  of  labor  unions  and  trade 
guilds.  Even  those  amiable  societies  that  you  rec- 
ommend would  in  their  efforts  to  find  employment  for 
their  own  members  necessarily  displace  others. 

For  even  the  philanthropy  which,  recognizing  the 
evil  of  trying  to  help  labor  by  alms,  seeks  to  help 


OPEN   LETTER   TO   POPE   LEO   XIII.  87 

men  to  help  themselves  bj  finding  them  work, 
becomes  aggressive  in  the  blind  and  bitter  struggle 
that  private  property  in  land  entails,  and  in  helping 
one  set  of  men  injures  others.  Thus,  to  minimize  the 
bitter  complaints  of  taking  work  from  others  and 
lessening  the  wages  of  others  in  providing  their  own 
beneficiaries  with  work  and  wages,  benevolent  so- 
cieties are  forced  to  devices  akin  to  the  digging  of 
holes  and  filling  them  up  again.  Our  American  so- 
cieties feel  this  difficulty,  General  Booth  encounters 
it  in  England,  and  the  Catholic  societies  which  your 
Holiness  recommends  must  find  it,  when  they  are 
formed. 

Your  Holiness  knows  of,  and  I  am  sure  honors, 
the  princely  generosity  of  Baron  Hirsch  towards  his 
suffering  co-religionists.  But,  as  I  write,  the  i^few 
York  newspapers  contain  accounts  of  an  immense 
meeting  held  in  Cooper  Union,  in  this  city,  on  the 
evening  of  Friday,  September  4,  in  which  a  number 
of  Hebrew  trades  unions  protested  in  the  strong- 
est manner  against  the  loss  of  work  and  reduction  of 
wages  that  is  being  effected  by  Baron  Hirsch's 
generosity  in  bringing  their  own  countrymen  here 
and  teaching  them  to  work.  The  resolution  unani- 
mously adopted  at  this  great  meeting  thus  concludes : 

"  We  now  demand  of  Baron  Hirsch  himself  that 
he  release  us  from  his  '  charity '  and  take  back  the 
millions,  which,  instead  of  a  blessing,  have  proved  a 
curse  and  a  source  of  misery." 

Nor  does  this  show  that  the  members  of  these 
Hebrew  labor  unions — who  are  themselves  immi- 
grants of  the  same  class  as  those  Baron  Hirsch  is 
striving  to  help,  for  in  the  next  generation  they  lose 


00  THE   CONDITION    01'   LABOR. 

with  US  their  distinctiveness— are  a  whit  less  gen- 
erous than  other  men. 

Labor  associations  of  the  nature  of  trade  guilds  or 
unions  are  necessarily  selfish  ;  by  the  law  of  their  being 
they  must  light  for  their  own  hand,  regardless  of  who 
is  hurt ;  they  ignore  and  must  ignore  the  teaching  of 
Christ  that  we  should  do  to  others  as  we  would  have 
them  do  to  us,  which  a  true  political  economy  shows  is 
the  only  way  to  the  full  emancipation  of  the  masses. 
They  must  do  their  best  to  starve  workmen  who  do 
not  join  them,  they  must  by  all  means  in  their  power 
force  back  the  "  blackleg  " — as  the  soldier  in  battle 
must  shoot  down  his  mother's  son  if  in  the  opposing 
ranks.  And  who  is  the  blackleg  ?  A  fellow  creature 
seeking  work — a  fellow  creature  in  all  probability 
more  pressed  and  starved  than  those  who  so  bitterly 
denounce  him,  and  often  with  the  hungry  pleading 
faces  of  wife  and  child  behind  him. 

And,  in  so  far  as  they  succeed,  what  is  it  that  trades 
guilds  and  unions  do  but  to  impose  more  restrictions 
on  natural  rights;  to  create  "trusts"  in  labor;  to  add 
to  privileged  classes  other  somewhat  privileged  classes; 
and  to  press  the  weaker  closer  to  the  wall  ? 

I  speak  without  prejudice  against  trades  unions, 
of  which  for  years  I  was  an  active  member.  And 
in  pointing  out  to  your  Holiness  that  their  principle 
is  selfish  and  incapable  of  large  and  permanent 
benefits,  and  that  their  methods  violate  natural  rights 
and  work  hardship  and  injustice,  I  am  only  saying 
to  you  what,  both  in  my  books  and  by  word  of 
mouth,  I  have  said  over  and  over  again  to  them. 
Nor  is  what  I  say  capable  of  dispute.  Intelligent 
trades    unionists  know   it,   and  the   less   intelligent 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.         89 

vaguely  feel  it.  And  even  those  of  the  classes  of 
wealth  and  leisure  who,  as  if  to  head  off  the  demand 
for  natural  rights,  are  preaching  trades  unionism  to 
working  men,  must  needs  admit  it. 

Your  Holiness  will  remember  the  great  London 
dock  strike  of  two  years  ago,  which,  with  that  of 
other  influential  men,  received  the  moral  support  of 
that  Prince  of  the  Church  whom  we  of  the  English 
speech  hold  higher  and  dearer  than  any  prelate  has 
been  held  by  us  since  the  blood  of  Thomas  A'Becket 
stained  the  Canterbury  altar. 

In  a  volume  called  "  The  Story  of  the  Dockers' 
Strike,"  written  by  Messrs.  H.  Lewellyn  Smith  and 
Yaughan  Nash,  with  an  introduction  by  Sydney 
Buxton,  M.  P.,  which  advocates  trades  unionism  as  the 
solution  of  the  labor  question,  and  of  which  a  large 
number  were  sent  to  Australia  as  a  sort  of  official 
recognition  of  the  generous  aid  received  from  there 
by  the  strikers,  I  find  in  the  summing  up,  on  pages 
164-5,  the  following : 

"  If  the  settlement  lasts,  work  at  the  docks  will  be 
more  regular,  better  paid,  and  carried  on  under  better 
conditions  than  ever  before.  All  this  will  be  an 
unqualified  gain  to  those  who  get  the  benefit  from  it. 
But  another  result  will  undoubtedly  be  to  contract  the 
field  of  employment  and  lessen  the  number  of  those 
for  v}hom  work  can  he  found.  The  lower  class  casual 
will,  in  the  end,  find  his  position  more  precarious 
than  ever  before,  in  proportion  to  the  increased  regu- 
larity of  work  which  the  "  fitter  "  of  the  laborers  will 
secure.  The  effect  of  the  organization  of  dock  labor, 
as  of  all  classes  of  labor,  will  be  to  squeeze  out  t'>e 
residuum.  The  loafer,  the  cadger,  the  failure  in  the 
industrial  race — the  members  of  '  Class  B '  of  Mr. 
Charles  Booth's  hierarchy  of  social  classes — will  be  no 


90  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

gainers  by  the  change,  but  will  rather  find  another 
door  closed  against  them,  and  this  in  many  cases  the 
last  door  to  employment.''^ 

I  am  far  from  wishing  that  your  Holiness  should 
join  in  that  pharisaical  denunciation  of  trades 
unions  common  among  those  who,  while  quick  to 
point  out  the  injustice  of  trades  unions  in  denying 
to  others  the  equal  right  to  work,  are  themselves 
supporters  of  that  more  primary  injustice  that  denies 
the  equal  right  to  the  standing  place  and  natural 
material  necessary  to  work.  What  I  wish  to  point  out 
is  that  trades  unionism,  while  it  may  be  a  partial 
paliative,  is  not  a  remedy ;  that  it  has  not  that  moral 
character  which  could  alone  justify  one  in  the  position 
of  your  Holiness  in  urging  it  as  good  in  itself.  Yet, 
so  long  as  you  insist  on  private  property  in  land 
what  better  can  you  do  ? 


V. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  Encyclical  you  declare  that 
the  responsibility  of  the  apostolical  office  urges  your 
Holiness  to  treat  the  question  of  the  condition  of  labor 
"  expressly  and  at  length  in  order  that  there  may  be  no 
mistake  as  to  the  principles  which  trutli  and  justice 
dictate  for  its  settlement."  But,  blinded  by  one  false 
assumption,  you  do  not  see  even  fundamentals. 

You  assume  that  the  labor  question  is  a  question 
between  wage-workers  and  their  employers.  But 
working  for  wages  is  not  the  primary  or  exclusive  occu- 
pation of  labor.  Primarily  men  work  for  themselves 
without  the  intervention  of  an  employer.  And  the 
primary  source  of  wages  is  iii  the  earnings  of  labor, 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  Xin.         91 

the  man  who  works  for  himseK  and  consumes  his 
own  products  receiving  his  wages  in  the  fruits  of  his 
labor.  Are  not  fishermen,  boatmen,  cab  drivers, 
peddlers,  working  farmers — all,  in  short,  of  the  many 
workers  who  get  their  wages  directly  by  the  sale  of 
their  services  or  products  without  the  medium  of  an 
employer,  as  much  laborers  as  those  who  work  for  the 
specific  wages  of  an  employer  ?  In  your  consideration 
of  remedies  you  do  not  seem  even  to  have  thought  of 
them.  Yet  in  reality  the  laborers  who  work  for 
themselves  are  the  first  to  be  considered,  since  what 
men  will  be  willing  to  accept  from  employers  depends 
manifestly  on  what  they  can  get  by  working  for  them- 
selves. 

You  assume  that  all  employers  are  rich  men,  who 
might  raise  wages  much  higher  were  they  not  so 
grasping.  But  is  it  not  the  fact  that  the  great 
majority  of  employers  are  in  reality  as  much  pressed 
by  competition  as  their  workmen,  many  of  them 
constantly  on  the  verge  of  failure  ?  Such  employers 
could  not  possibly  raise  the  wages  they  pay,  however 
they  might  wish  to,  unless  all  others  were  compelled 
to  do  so. 

You  assume  that  there  are  in  the  natural  order  two 
classes,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  and  that  laborers  naturally 
belong  to  the  poor. 

It  is  true  as  you  say  that  there  are  differences  in 
capacity,  in  diligence,  in  health  and  in  strength,  that 
may  produce  differences  in  fortune.  These,  however, 
are  not  the  differences  that  divide  men  into  rich  and 
poor.  The  natural  differences  in  powers  and  aptitudes 
are  certainly  not  greater  than  are  natural  differences 
in  stature.     But  while  it  is  only  by  selecting  giants 


92  THE   C  'NDITIO.V   OF   LABOE. 

and  dwarfs  that  we  can  find  men  twice  as  tall  as  others, 
yet  in  the  difference  between  rich  and  poor  that  exists 
to-day  we  find  some  men  richer  than  other  men  by  the 
thousand  fold  and  the  million  fold. 

Nowhere  do  these  differences  between  wealth  and 
poverty  coincide  with  differences  in  individual  powers 
and  aptitudes.  The  real  difference  between  rich  and 
poor  is  the  difference  between  those  who  hold  the  toll 
gates  and  those  who  pay  toll  ;  between  tribute  re- 
ceivers and  tribute  yielders. 

In  what  way  does  nature  justify  such  a  difference  ? 
In  the  numberless  varieties  of  animated  Lature  we  lind 
some  species  that  are  evidently  intended  to  live  on 
other  species.  But  their  relations  are  always  marked 
by  unmistakable  differences  in  size,  shape  or  organs. 
To  man  has  been  given  dominion  over  all  the  other 
livino-  thing's  that  tenant  the  earth.  But  is  not  this 
mastery  indicated  even  in  externals,  so  that  no  one  can 
fail  on  sight  to  distinguish  between  a  man  and  one  of 
the  inferior  animals.  Our  American  apologists  for 
slavery  used  to  contend  that  the  black  skin  and  wooly 
hair  of  the  negro  indicated  the  intent  of  nature  that 
the  black  should  serve  the  white ;  but  the  difference 
that  you  assume  to  be  natural  is  between  men  of  the 
same  race.  What  difference  does  nature  show  between 
such  men  as  would  indicate  her  intent  that  one  should 
live  idly  yet  be  rich,  and  the  other  should  work  hard  yet 
be  poor  ?  If  I  could  bring  you  from  the  United  States 
a  man  who  has  $2)0,000,000,  and  one  who  is  glad 
to  work  for  a  few  dollars  a  week,  and  place  them 
side  by  side  in  your  ante-chamber,  would  you  be  able 
to  tell  which  was  which,  even  were  you  to  call  in 
the  most  skilled  anatomist?     Is  it  not  clear  that 


OPEK  LEtTEE  TO  POpE  LEO  Xlll.  03 

God  in  no  way  countenances  or  condones  the  di- 
vision of  rich  and  poor  that  exists  to-day,  or  in 
any  way  permits  it,  except  as  having  given  them  free 
will  he  permits  men  to  choose  either  good  or  evil,  and 
to  avoid  heaven  if  they  prefer  hell.  For  is  it  not  clear 
that  the  division  of  men  into  the  classes  rich  and  poor 
has  invariably  its  origin  in  force  and  fraud  ;  invariably 
involves  violation  of  the  moral  law ;  and  is  really  a 
division  into  those  who  get  the  profits  of  robbery 
and  those  who  are  robbed ;  those  who  hold  in  exclusive 
possession  what  God  made  for  all,  and  those  who  are 
deprived  of  His  bounty  ?  Did  not  Christ  in  all  His 
utterances  and  parables  show  that  the  gross  difference 
between  rich  and  poor  is  opposed  to  God's  law? 
Would  he  have  condemned  the  rich  so  strongly  as  he 
did,  if  the  class  distinction  between  rich  and  poor 
did  not  involve  injustice — was  not  opposed  to  God's 
intent  ? 

It  seems  to  us  that  your  Holiness  misses  its  real  signi- 
ficance in  intimating  that  Christ,  in  becoming  the  son  of 
a  carpenter  and  Himself  working  as  a  carpenter,  showed 
merely  that  "there  is  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  in 
seeking  one's  bread  by  labor."  To  say  that  is  almost 
like  saying  that  by  not  robbing  people  He  showed  that 
there  is  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  in  honesty  ?  If  you 
will  consider  how  true  in  any  large  view  is  the  classifi- 
cation of  all  men  into  workingmen,  beggarmen  and 
thieves,  you  will  see  that  it  was  morally  impossible 
that  Christ  during  His  stay  on  earth  should  have  been 
anything  else  than  a  workingman,  since  He  who  came 
to  fulfil  the  law  must  by  deed  as  well  as  word  obey 
God's  law  of  labor. 

See  how  fully  and  how  beautifully  Christ's  life 


94  THE   CONDITION   OF    LABOR. 

on  earth  illustrated  this  law.  Entering  our  earthly 
life  in  the  weakness  of  infancy,  as  it  is  appointed  that 
all  should  enter  it,  He  lovingly  took  what  in  the 
natural  order  is  lovingly  rendered,  the  sustenance, 
secured  by  labor,  that  one  generation  owes  to  its 
immediate  successors.  Arrived  at  maturity.  He  earned 
His  own  subsistence  by  that  common  labor  in  which 
the  majority  of  men  must  and  do  earn  it.  Then 
passing  to  a  higher — to  the  very  highest —sphere  of 
labor,  He  earned  His  subsistence  by  the  teaching  of 
moral  and  spiritual  truths,  receiving  its  material 
wages  in  the  love  offerings  of  grateful  hearers,  and 
not  refusing  the  costly  spikenard  with  which  Mary 
anointed  His  feet.  So,  when  He  chose  His  dis- 
ciples, He  did  not  go  to  land  owners  or  other  mo- 
nopolists who  live  on  the  labor  of  others,  but  to 
common  laboring  men.  And  when  He  called  them  to 
a  higher  sphere  of  labor  and  sent  them  out  to  teach 
moral  and  spiritual  truths.  He  told  them  to  take,  with- 
out condescension  on  the  one  hand  or  sense  of 
degradation  on  the  other,  the  loving  return  for  such 
labor,  saying  to  them  that  the  "  laborer  is  worthy  of 
his  hire,"  thus  showing,  what  we'  hold,  that  all  labor 
does  not  consist  in  what  is  called  manual  labor,  but 
that  whoever  helps  to  add  to  the  material,  intellectual, 
moral  or  spiritual  fullness  of  life  is  also  a  laborer.* 

*  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the  investigator,  the  philoso- 
pher, the  teacher,  the  artist,  the  poet,  the  priest,  though  not 
engaged  in  the  production  of  wealth  are  not  only  engaged  in  the 
production  of  utilities  and  satisfactions  to  which  the  production 
of  wealth  is  only  a  means,  but  by  acquiring  and  diffusing  knowl-. 
edge,  stimulating  mental  powers  and  elevating  the  moral  sense, 
may  greatly  increase  the  ability  to  produce  wealth.  For  man 
does  not  live  by  bread  alone.  *  *  *  He  who  by  any  exertion  of 
mind  or  body  adds  to  the  aggregate  of  enjoyable  wealth. increases 
the  sum  of  human  knowledge,  or  gives  to  human  life  higher  eleva- 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XHl.        95 

In  assuming  that  laborers,  even  ordinary  manual 
laborers,  are  naturally  poor,  you  ignore  the  fact  that 
labor  is  the  producer  of  wealth,  and  attribute  to 
the  natural  law  of  the  Creator  an  injustice  that 
comes  from  man's  impious  violation  of  His  benevolent 
intention.  In  the  rudest  stage  of  the  arts  it  is  possible, 
where  justice  prevails,  for  all  well  men  to  earn  a  living. 
With  the  labor-saving  appliances  of  our  time,  it  should 
be  possible  for  all  to  earn  much  more.  And  so,  in 
saying  that  poverty  is  no  disgrace,  you  convey 
an  unreasonable  implication.  For  poverty  ought  to 
be  a  disgrace,  since  in  a  condition  of  social  justice,  it 
would,  where  unsought  from  religious  motives  or  un- 
imposed  by  unavoidable  misfortune,  imply  recklessness 
or  laziness. 

The  sympathy  of  your  Holiness  seems  exclusively 
directed  to  the  poor,  the  workers.  Ought  this  to  be 
so  ?  Are  not  the  rich,  the  idlers,  to  be  pitied  also  ? 
By  the  word  of  the  Gospel  it  is  the  rich  rather  than 
the  poor  who  call  for  pity,  for  the  presumption  is  that 
they  will  share  the  fate  of  Dives.  And  to  any  one 
who  believes  in  a  future  life  the  condition  of  him  who 
wakes  to  find  his  cherished  millions  left  behind  must 
seem  pitiful.  But  even  in  this  life,  how  really  pitiable 
are  the  rich.  The  evil  is  not  in  wealth  in  itself — in 
its  command  over  material  things ;  it  is  in  the  possession 

tion  or  greater  fullness — he  is,  in  the  large  meaning  of  the  words, 
a  "producer,"  a  "working  man,"  a  'laborer."  and  is  honestly 
earning  honest  wages.  But  he  who  without  doing  aught  to  make 
mankind  richer,  wiser,  better,  happier,  lives  on  the  toil  of  others — 
he,  no  matter  by  what  name  of  honor  he  may  be  called,  or  how 
lustily  the  priests  of  Mammon  may  swing  their  censers  before 
him,  is  in  the  last  analysis  but  a  beggarman  or  a  thief. — Protec- 
tion or  Free  Trade,  pp.  74-75. 


96  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

of  wealth  while  others  are  steeped  in  poverty ;  in  being 
raised  above  touch  with  the  life  of  humanity,  from 
its  work  and  its  straggles,  its  hopes  and  its  fears,  and 
above  all,  from  the  love  that  sweetens  life,  and  the 
kindly  sympathies  and  generous  acts  that  strengthen 
faith  in  man  and  trust  in  God.  Consider  how  tlie  rich 
see  the  meaner  side  of  human  nature;  how  they  are 
surrounded  by  flatterers  and  sycophants ;  how  they  find 
ready  instruments  not  only  to  gratify  vicious  impulses, 
but  to  prompt  and  stimulate  them ;  how  they  must 
constantly  be  on  guard  lest  they  be  s^vindled ;  how 
often  they  must  suspect  an  ulterior  motive  behind 
kindly  deed  or  friendly  word  ;  how  if  they  try  to  be 
generous  they  are  beset  by  shameless  beggars  and 
scheming  impostors;  how  often  the  family  affections 
are  chilled  for  them,  and  their  deaths  anticipated  with 
the  ill-concealed  joy  of  expectant  possession.  The 
worst  evil  of  poverty  is  not  in  the  want  of  material 
things,  but  in  the  stunting  and  distortion  of  the 
higher  qualities.  So,  though  in  another  way,  the 
possession  of  unearned  wealth  likewise  stunts  and 
distorts  what  is  noblest  in  man. 

God's  commands  cannot  be  evaded  with  impunity. 
If  it  be  God's  command  that  men  shall  earn  their  bread 
by  labor,  the  idle  rich  must  suffer.  And  they  do.  See 
the  utter  vacancy  of  the  lives  of  those  who  live  for 
pleasure  ;  see  the  loathsome  vices  bred  in  a  class  who 
surrounded  by  poverty  are  sated  with  wealth.  See 
that  terrible  punishment  of  ennui,  of  which  the  poor 
know  so  little  that  they  cannot  understand  it ;  see  the 
pessimism  that  grows  among  the  wealthy  classes — 
that  shuts  out  God,  that  despises   men,  that  deems 


OPEN  LETTEE  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.        97 

existence  in  itself  an  evil,  and  fearing  death  yet 
longs  for  annihilation. 

When  Christ  told  the  rich  young  man  who  sought 
Him  to  sell  all  he  had  and  to  give  it  to  the  poor,  He 
was  not  thinking  of  the  poor,  but  of  the  young  man. 
And  I  doubt  not  that  among  the  rich,  and  especially 
among  the  self-made  rich,  there  are  many  who  at 
times  at  least  feel  keenly  the  folly  of  their  riches  and 
fear  for  the  dangers  and  temptations  to  which  these 
expose  their  children.  But  the  strength  of  long  habit, 
the  promptings  of  pride,  the  excitement  of  making 
and  holding  what  has  become  for  them  the  counters 
in  a  game  of  cards,  the  family  expectations  that  have 
assumed'  the  character  of  rights,  and  the  real  difficulty 
they  find  in  making  any  good  use  of  their  wealth, 
bind  them  to  their  burden,  like  a  weary  donkey  to  his 
pack,  till  they  stumble  on  the  precipice  that  bounds 
this  life. 

Men  who  are  sure  of  getting  food  when  they  shall 
need  it  eat  only  what  appetite  dictates.  But  with  the 
sparse  tribes  who  exist  on  the  verge  of  the  habitable 
globe  life  is  either  a  famine  or  a  feast.  Enduring 
hunger  for  days,  the  fear  of  it  prompts  them  to  gorge 
like  anacondas  when  successful  in  their  quest  of  game. 
And  so,  what  gives  wealth  its  curse  is  what  drives  men 
to  seek  it,  what  makes  it  so  envied  and  admired — the 
fear  of  want.  As  the  unduly  rich  are  the  corollary  of 
the  unduly  poor,  so  is  the  soul-destroying  quality  of 
riches  but  the  reflex  of  the  want  that  embrutes  and 
degrades.  The  real  evil  lies  in  the  injustice  from 
which  unnatural  possession  and  unnatural  deprivation 
both  spring. 

But  this  injustice  can  hardly  be  charged  on  Individ- 


98  THE  CONDITION   OP   LABOR. 

uals  or  classes.  The  existence  of  private  property  in 
land  is  a  great  social  wrong  from  which  society  at  large 
suffers,  and  of  which  the  very  rich  and  the  very  poor 
are  alike  victims,  though  at  the  opposite  extremes. 
Seeing  this,  it  seems  to  us  like  a  violation  of  Christian 
charity  to  speak  of  the  rich  as  though  they  individually 
were  responsible  for  the  sufferings  of  the  poor.  Yet, 
while  you  do  this,  you  insist  that  the  cause  of 
monstrous  wealth  and  degrading  poverty  shall  not  be 
touched.  Here  is  a  man  with  a  disfiguring  and 
dangerous  excrescence.  One  physician  would  kindly, 
gently,  but  firmly  remove  it.  Another  insists  that  it 
shall  not  be  removed,  but  at  the  same  time  holds  up 
the  poor  victim  to  hatred  and  ridicule.  Which  is 
right  ? 

In  seeking  to  restore  all  men  to  their  equal  and 
natural  rights  we  do  not  seek  the  benefit  of  any  class, 
but  of  all.  For  we  both  know  by  faith  and  see  by  fact 
that  injustice  can  profit  no  one  and  that  justice  must 
benefit  all. 

Nor  do  we  seek  any  "  futile  and  ridiculous  equality." 
We  recognize,  with  you,  that  there  must  always  be 
differences  and  inequalities.  In  so  far  as  these  are 
in  conformity  with  the  moral  law,  in  so  far  as  they 
do  not  violate  the  command,  "  Thou  shalt  not  steal," 
we  are  content.  We  do  not  seek  to  better  God's  work ; 
we  seek  only  to  do  His  will.  The  equality  we  would 
bring  about  is  not  the  equality  of  fortune,  but  the 
equality  of  natural  opportunity;  the  equality  that 
reason  and  religion  alike  proclaun — the  equality  in 
usufruct  of  all  His  children  to  the  bounty  of  Our 
Father  who  art  in  Heaven. 

And   in  taking  for  the  uses  of  society  what  we 


OPmt   LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.        99 

clearly  see  is  the  great  fund  intended  for  society  in 
the  divine  order,  we  would  not  levy  the  slightest  tax 
on  the  possessors  of  wealth,  no  matter  how  rich  they 
might  be.  Not  only  do  we  deem  such  taxes  a  violation 
of  the  right  of  property,  but  we  see  that  by  virtue  of 
beautiful  adaptations  in  the  economic  laws  of  the 
Creator,  it  is  impossible  for  any  one  honestly  to  ac- 
quire wealth,  without  at  the  same  time  adding  to  the 
wealth  of  the  world. 

To  persist  in  a  wrong,  to  refuse  to  undo  it,  is  always 
to  become  involved  in  other  wrongs.  Those  who 
defend  private  property  in  land,  and  thereby  deny 
the  first  and  most  important  of  all  human  rights, 
the  equal  right  to  the  material  substratum  of  life, 
are  compelled  to  one  of  two  courses.  Either  they 
must,  as  do  those  whose  gospel  is  "  Devil  take  the 
hindermost,"  deny  the  equal  right  to  life,  and  by 
some  theory  like  that  to  which  the  English 
clergyman  Malthus  has  given  his  name,  assert  that 
nature  (they  do  not  ventm-e  to  say  God)  brings  into 
the  world  more  men  than  there  is  provision  for  ;  or, 
they  must,  as  do  the  socialists,  assert  as  rights  what  in 
themselves  are  wrongs. 

Your  Holiness  in  the  Encyclical  gives  an  example  of 
this.  Denying  the  equality  of  right  to  the  material 
basis  of  life,  and  yet  conscious  that  there  is  a 
right  to  live,  you  assert  the  right  of  laborers  to  em- 
ployment and  their  right  to  receive  from  their 
employers  a  certain  indefinite  wage.  'No  such  rights 
exist.  No  one  has  a  right  to  demand  employment  of 
another,  or  to  demand  higher  wages  than  the  other  is 
willing  to  give,  or  in  any  way  to  put  pressm'e  on 


100  THE  COKDITION  OP  LABOR. 

anotlier  to  make  him  raise  such  wages  against  his  will. 
There  can  be  no  better  moral  justification  for  such 
demands  on  employers  by  workingmen  than  there 
would  be  for  employers  demanding  that  workingmen 
shall  be  compelled  to  work  for  them  when  they  do 
not  want  to  and '  to  accept  wages  lower  than  they  are 
willing  to  take.  Any  seeming  justification  springs 
from  a  prior  wrong,  the  denial  to  workingmen  of 
their  natural  rights,  and  can  in  the  last  analysis  only 
rest  on  that  supreme  dictate  of  self-preservation  that 
under  extraordinary  circumstances  makes  pardonable 
what  in  itself  is  theft,  or  sacrilege  or  even  murder. 

A  fugitive  slave  with  the  bloodhounds  of  his  pur- 
suers baying  at  his  heels  would  in  true  Christian 
morals  be  held  blameless  if  he  seized  the  first  horse 
he  came  across,  even  though  to  take  it  he  had  to 
knock  down  the  rider.  But  this  is  not  to  justify 
horse-stealing  as  an  ordinary  means  of  travehng. 

When  his  disciples  were  hungry  Christ  permitted 
them  to  pluck  corn  on  the  Sabbath  day.  But  He 
never  denied  the  sanctity  of  the  Sabbath  by  asserting 
that  it  was  under  ordinary  circumstances  a  proper  time 
to  gather  corn. 

He  justified  David,  who  when  pressed  by  hunger 
committed  what  ordinarily  would  be  sacrilege,  by 
taking  from  the  temple  the  loaves  of  proposition. 
But  in  this  He  was  far  from  saying  that  the  robbing 
of  temples  was  a  proper  way  of  getting  a  living. 

In  the  Encyclical  however  you  commend  the  appli- 
cation to  the  ordinary  relations  of  life,  under  normal 
conditions,  of  principles  that  in  ethics  are  only  to 
be  tolerated  under  extraordinary  conditions.  You 
are  driven  to  this  assertion  of  false  rights  by  your 


OPEN  LETTEE  TO  POPE  LEO  XHI.        101 

denial  of  true  rights.  The  natural  right  which  each 
man  has  is  not  that  of  demanding  employment  or 
wages  from  another  man ;  but  that  of  employing 
himself — that  of  applying  by  his  own  labor  to  the 
inexhaustible  storeliouse  which  the  Creator  has  in  the 
land  provided  for  all  men.  Were  that  storehouse  open, 
as  by  the  single  tax  we  would  open  it,  the  natural  de- 
mand for  labor  would  keep  pace  with  the  supply,  the 
man  who  sold  labor  and  the  man  who  bought  it 
would  become  free  exchangers  for  mutual  advantage, 
and  all  cause  for  dispute  between  workman  and  em- 
ployer would  be  gone.  For  then,  all  being  free  to  em- 
ploy themselves,  the  mere  opportunity  to  labor  would 
cease  to  seem  a  boon ;  and  since  no  one  would  work  for 
another  for  less,  all  things  considered,  than  he  could 
earn  by  working  for  himself,  wages  would  necessarily 
rise  to  their  full  value,  and  the  relations  of  workman 
and  employer  be  regulated  by  mutual  interest  and 
convenience. 

This  is  the  only  way  in  which  they  can  be  satisfac- 
torily regulated. 

Your  Holiness  seems  to  assume  that  there  is  some 
just  rate  of  wages  that  employers  ought  to  be  willing 
to  pay  and  that  laborers  should  be  content  to  receive, 
and  to  imagine  that  if  this  were  secured  there  would 
be  an  end  of  strife.  This  rate  you  evidently  think  of 
as  that  which  will  give  workingmen  a  frugal  living, 
and  perhaps  enable  them  by  hard  work  and  strict 
economy  to  lay  by  a  little  something. 

But  how  c^n  a  just  rate  of  wages  be  fixed  without 
the  "  higgling  of  the  market"  any  more  than  the  just 
price  of  com  or  pigs  or  ships  or  paintings  can  be  so 
fixed?     And  would  not  arbitrary  regulation  in  the 


102  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

one  case  as  in  the  other  check  that  interplay  that  most 
efiectively  promotes  the  economical  adjustment  of 
productive  forces  ?  Why  should  buyers  of  labor,  any 
more  than  buyers  of  commodities,  be  called  on  to  pay 
higher  prices  than  in  a  free  market  they  are  com- 
pelled to  pay  ?  Why  should  the  sellers  of  labor  be 
content  with  anything  less  than  in  a  free  market  they 
can  obtain?  Why  should  workingmen  be  content 
with  frugal  fare  when  the  world  is  so  rich  ?  Why 
should  they  be  satisfied  with  a  life  time  of  toil  and 
stinting,  when  the  world  is  so  beautiful  ?  Why  should 
not  they  also  desire  to  gratify  the  higher  instincts,  the 
finer  tastes  ?  Why  should  they  be  forever  content  to 
travel  in  the  steerage  when  others  find  the  cabin 
more  enjoyable  ? 

Nor  will  they.  The  ferment  of  our  time  does  not 
arise  merely  from  the  fact  tliat  workingmen  find  it 
harder  to  live  on  the  same  scale  of  comfort.  It  is  also 
and  perhaps  still  more  largely  due  to  the  increase 
of  their  desires  with  an  improved  scale  of  comfort. 
This  increase  of  desire  must  continue.  For  working- 
men  are  men.     And  man  is  the  unsatisfied  animal. 

He  is  not  an  ox,  of  whom  it  may  be  said,  so  much 
grass,  so  much  grain,  so  much  water,  and  a  little  salt, 
and  he  will  be  content.  On  the  contrary,  the  more 
he  gets  the  more  he  craves.  When  he  has  enough 
food  tlien  he  wants  better  food.  When  he  gets  a 
shelter  then  he  wants  a  more  commodious  and  tasty 
one.  When  his  animal  needs  are  satisfied  then  men- 
tal and  spiritual  desires  arise. 

This  restless  discontent  is  of  the  nature  of  man — of 
that  nobler  nature  that  raises  him  above  the  animals  by 
so  immeasurable  a  gulf,  and  shows  him  to  be  indeed 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIIL        103 

created  in  the  likeness  of  God.  It  is  not  to  be  quar- 
relled with,  for  it  is  the  motor  of  all  progress.  It  is 
this  that  has  raised  St.  Peter's  dome  and  on  dull,  dead 
canvass  made  the  angelic  face  of  the  Madonna  to 
glow ;  it  is  this  that  has  weighed  suns  and  analyzed 
stars,  and  opened  page  after  page  of  the  wonderful 
works  of  creative  intelligence ;  it  is  this  that  has 
narrowed  the  Atlantic  to  an  ocean  ferry  and  trained 
the  hghtning  to  carry  our  messages  to  the  remotest 
lands;  it  is  this  that  is  opening  to  us  possibilities 
beside  which  all  that  our  modem  civilization  has  as 
yet  accomplished  seem  small.  Nor  can  it  be  repressed 
save  by  degrading  and  imbruting  men ;  by  reducing 
Europe  to  Asia. 

Hence,  short  of  what  wages  may  be  earned  when 
all  restrictions  on  labor  are  removed  and  access  to 
natural  opportunities  on  equal  terms  secured  to  all,  it 
is  impossible  to  fix  any  rate  of  wages  that  will  be 
deemed  just,  or  any  rate  of  wages  that  can  prevent 
workingmen  striving  to  get  more.  So  far  from  it 
making  workingmen  more  contented  to  improve  their 
condition  a  little,  it  is  certain  to  make  them  more  dis- 
contented. 

IS^or  are  you  asking  justice  when  you  ask  employers 
to  pay  their  workingmen  more  than  they  are  compelled 
to  pay — more  than  they  could  get  others  to  do  the 
work  for.  You  are  asking  charity.  For  the  surplus 
that  the  rich  employer  thus  gives  is  not  in  reality 
wages,  it  is  essentially  alms. 

In  speaking  of  the  practical  measures  for  the  im- 
provement of  the  condition  of  labor  which  your  Holi- 
ness suggests,  I  have  not  mentioned  what  you  place 


104  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOB. 

much  stress  upon — charity.  But  there  is  nothing 
practical  in  such  recommendations  as  a  cure  for 
poverty,  nor  will  any  one  so  consider  them.  If  it 
were  possible  for  the  giving  of  alms  to  abolish  poverty 
there  would  be  no  povei'ty  in  Christendom. 

Charity  is  indeed  a  noble  and  beautiful  virtue, 
grateful  to  man  and  approved  by  God.  But  charity 
must  be  built  on  justice.     It  cannot  supersede  justice. 

What  is  wrong  with  the  condition  of  labor  through 
the  Christian  world  is  that  labor  is  robbed.  And 
while  you  justify  the  continuance  of  that  robbery  it  is 
idle  to  urge  charity.  To  do  so — to  commend  charity 
as  a  substitute  for  justice,  is  indeed  something  akin  in 
essence  to  those  heresies,  condemned  by  your  prede- 
cessors, that  taught  that  the  Gospel  had  superseded 
the  law,  and  that  the  love  of  God  exempted  men  from 
moral  obhgations. 

All  that  charity  can  do  where  injustice  exists  is  here 
and  there  to  somewhat  mollify  the  effects  of  injustice. 
It  cannot  cure  them.  JSTor  is  even  what  little  it  can 
do  to  mollify  the  effects  of  injustice  without  evil. 
For  what  may  be  called  the  superimposed,  and  in  this 
sense,  secondary  virtues,  work  evil  where  the  funda- 
mental or  primary  virtues  are  absent.  Thus  sobriety 
is  a  virtue  and  diligence  is  a  virtue.  But  a  sober  aud 
diligent  thief  is  all  the  more  dangerous.  Thus 
patience  is  a  virtue.  But  patience  under  wrong  is  the 
condoning  of  wrong.  Thus  it  is  a  virtue  to  seek 
knowledge  and  to  endeavor  to  cultivate  the  mental 
powers.  But  the  wicked  man  becomes  more  cap- 
able of  evil  by  reason  of  his  intelligence.  Devils  we 
always  think  of  as  intelligent. 

And  thus  that  pseudo  charity  that  discards  and 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIII.        105 

denies  justice  works  evil.  On  the  one  side,  it  demor- 
alizes its  recipients,  outraging  that  human  dignity 
which  as  you  say  "  God  himself  treats  with  reverence," 
and  turning  into  beggars  and  paupers  men  who  to  be- 
come self  supporting,  self  respecting  citizens  only  need 
the  restitution  of  what  God  has  given  them.  On 
the  other  side,  it  acts  as  an  anodyne  to  the  consciences 
of  those  who  are  living  on  the  robbery  of  their  fellows, 
and  fosters  that  moral  delusion  and  spiritual  pride 
that  Christ  doubtless  had  in  mind  when  he  said  it  was 
easier  for  a  camel  to  pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle 
than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  Heaven. 
For  it  leads  men  steeped  in  injustice,  and  using  their 
money  and  their  influence  to  bolster  up  injustice,  to 
think  that  in  giving  alms  they  are  doing  something 
more  than  their  duty  towards  man  and  deserve  to  be 
very  well  thought  of  by  God,  and  in  a  vague  way  to 
attribute  to  their  own  goodness  what  really  belongs  to 
God's  goodness.  For  consider  :  Who  is  the  All-pro- 
vider? Who  is  it  that  as  you  say,  "owes  to  man  a 
storehouse  that  shall  never  fail,"  and  which  "  he  finds 
only  in  the  inexhaustible  fertility  of  the  earth."  Is  it 
not  God  ?  And  when,  therefore,  men,  deprived  of 
the  bounty  of  their  God,  are  made  dependent  on  the 
bounty  of  their  fellow  creatures,  are  not  these  crea- 
tures, as  it  were,  put  in  the  place  of  God,  to  take 
credit  to  themselves  for  paying  obligations  that  you 
yourself  say  God  owes  ? 

But  worse  perhaps  than  all  else  is  the  way  in  which 
this  substituting  of  vague  injunctions  to  charity  for  the 
clear-cut  demands  of  justice  opens  an  easy  means  for 
the  professed  teachers  of  the  Christian  religion  of  all 
branches  and  communions  to  placate  Mammon  while 


106  THE  CONDITION   OF   LABOB. 

persuading  themselves  that  they  are  serving  God. 
Had  the  English  clergy  not  subordinated  the  teaching 
of  justice  to  the  teaching  of  charity — to  go  no  further 
in  illustrating  a  principle  of  which  the  whole  history 
of  Ohristenlotn  from  Constantine's  time  to  our  own  is 
witness — the  Tudor  tyranny  would  never  have  arisen, 
and  the  separation  of  the  Church  been  averted;  had  the 
clergy  of  France  never  substituted  charity  for  justice, 
the  monstrous  iniquities  of  the  ancient  regime  would 
never  have  brought  the  horrors  of  the  Great  Revolu- 
tion ;  and  in  my  own  country  had  those  who  should 
have  preached  justice  not  satisfied  themselves  with 
preaching  kindness,  chattel  slavery  could  never  have 
demanded  the  holocaust  of  our  civil  war. 

No,  your  Holiness  ;  as  faith  without  works  is  dead, 
as  men  cannot  give  to  God  His  due  while  denying  to 
their  fellows  the  rights  He  gave  them,  so  charity 
unsupported  by  justice  can  do  nothing  to  solve  the 
problem  of  the  existing  condition  of  labor.  Though 
the  rich  were  to  "  bestow  all  their  goods  to  feed  the 
poor  and  give  their  bodies  to  be  burned,"  poverty 
would  continue  while  property  in  land  continues. 

Take  the  case  of  the  rich  man  to-day  who  is  hon- 
estly desirous  of  devoting  his  wealth  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  condition  of  labor.     What  can  he  do  ? 

Bestow  his  wealth  on  those  who  need  it  ?  He  may 
help  some  who  deserve  it,  but  will  not  improve  gene- 
ral conditions.  And  against  the  good  he  may  do  will 
be  the  danger  of  doing  harm. 

Build  churches  ?  Under  the  shadow  of  churches 
poverty  festers  and  the  vice  that  is  born  of  it  breeds. 

Build  schools  and  colleges  ?  Save  as  it  may  lead 
men  to  see  the  iniq^uity  of  private  property  in  land, 


OPEN  LETTEE  TO  POPE  LEO  XIH.       107 

increased  education  can  effect  nothing  for  mere  la- 
borers, for  as  education  is  diffused  the  wages  of  edu- 
cation sink. 

Establish  hospitals  ?  Why,  already  it  seems  to  la- 
borers that  there  are  too  many  seeking  work,  and  to 
save  and  prolong  life  is  to  add  to  the  pressure. 

Build  model  tenements  ?  Unless  he  cheapens  house 
accommodations  he  but  drives  further  the  class  he 
would  benefit,  and  as  he  cheapens  house  accommoda- 
tion he  brings  more  to  seek  employment  and  cheapens 
wages. 

Institute  laboratories,  scientific  schools,  workshops 
for  physical  experiments  ?  He  but  stimulates  inven- 
tion and  discovery,  the  very  forces  that,  acting  on  a 
society  based  on  private  property  in  land,  are  crush- 
ing labor  as  between  the  upper  and  the  nether  mill- 
stone. 

Promote  emigration  from  places  where  wages  are 
low  to  places  where  they  are  somewhat  higher  ?  If 
he  does,  even  those  whom  he  at  first  helps  to  emi- 
grate will  soon  turn  on  him  to  demand  that  such  emi- 
gration shall  be  stopped  as  reducing  their  wages. 

Give  away  what  land  he  may  have,  or  refuse  to 
take  rent  for  it,  or  let  it  at  lower  rents  than  the  mar- 
ket price  ?  He  will  simply  make  new  land  owners  or 
partial  land  owners ;  he  may  make  some  individuals 
the  richer,  but  he  will  do  nothing  to  improve  the 
general  condition  of  labor. 

Or,  bethinking  himself  of  those  public  spirited  citi- 
zens of  classic  times  who  spent  great  suras  in  improv- 
ing their  native  cities,  shall  he  try  to  beautify  the 
city  of  his  birth  or  adoption  ?  Let  him  widen  and 
straighten  narrow  and  crooked  streets,  let  him  build 


108  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOE. 

parks  and  erect  fountains,  let  him  open  tramways  and 
bring  in  railroads,  or  in  any  way  make  beautiful  and 
attractive  liis  chosen  city,  and  what  will  be  the  result  ? 
Must  it  not  be  that  those  who  appropriate  God's 
bounty  will  take  his  also  ?  Will  it  not  be  that  the 
value  of  land  will  go  up,  and  that  the  net  result  of 
his  benefactions  will  be  an  increase  of  rents  and  a 
bounty  to  land  owners  ?  Why,  even  the  mere  an- 
nouncement that  he  is  going  to  do  such  things  will 
start  speculation  and  send  up  the  value  of  land  by 
leaps  and  bounds. 

What,  then,  can  the  rich  man  do  to  improve  the 
condition  of  labor  ? 

He  can  do  nothing  at  all  except  to  use  his  strength 
for  the  abolition  of  the  great  primary  wrong  that  robs 
men  of  their  birthright.  The  justice  of  God  laughs 
at  the  attempts  of  men  to  substitute  anything  else 
for  it. 

If  when  in  speaking  of  the  practical  measures  your 
Holiness  proposes,  I  did  not  note  the  moral  injunc- 
tions that  the  Encyclical  contains,  it  is  not  because  we 
do  not  think  morality  practical.  On  the  contrary  it 
seems  to  us  that  in  the  teachings  of  morality  is  to  be 
found  the  highest  practicality,  and  that  the  question. 
What  is  wise  ?  may  always  safely  be  subordinated  to 
the  question.  What  is  right  ?  But  your  Holiness  in 
the  Encyclical  expressly  deprives  the  moral  truths  you 
state  of  all  real  bearing  on  the  condition  of  labor, 
just  as  the  American  people,  by  their  legalization  of 
chattel  slavery,  used  to  deprive  of  all  practical  mean- 
ing the  declaration  they  deem  their  fundamental 
charter,  and  were  accustomed  to  read  solemnly  on 


OPBaf  LETTEE  TO  1»0PE  LEO  Xttl.  109 

every  national  anniversary.  That  declaration  asserts 
that  "  We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self  evident  that 
all  men  are  created  equal  and  are  endowed  by  their 
Creator  with  certain  unalienable  rights  ;  that  among 
these  are  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness." 
But  what  did  this  truth  mean  on  the  lips  of  men  who 
asserted  that  one  man  was  the  rightful  property  of 
another  man  who  had  bought  him ;  who  assarted  that  the 
slave  was  robbing  the  master  in  running  away,  and 
that  the  man  or  the  woman  who  helped  the  fugitive 
to  escape,  or  even  gave  him  a  cup  of  cold  water  in 
Christ's  name,  was  an  accessory  to  theft,  on  whose 
head  the  penalties  of  the  state  should  be  visited  ? 

Consider  the  moral  teachings  of  the  Encyclical : 

You  tell  us  that  God  owes  to  man  an  inexhaustible 
storehouse  which  he  finds  only  in  the  land.  Yet  you 
support  a  system  that  denies  to  the  great  majority 
of  men  all  right  of  recourse  to  this  storehouse. 

You  tell  us  that  the  necessity  of  labor  is  a  conse- 
quence of  original  sin.  Yet  you  support  a  system 
that  exempts  a  privileged  class  from  the  necessity  for 
labor  and  enables  them  to  shift  their  share  and  much 
more  than  their  share  of  labor  on  others. 

You  tell  us  that  God  has  not  created  us  for  the 
perishable  and  transitory  things  of  earth,  but  has 
given  us  this  world  as  a  place  of  exile  and  not  as  our 
true  country.  Yet  you  tell  us  that  some  of  the  exiles 
have  the  exclusive  right  of  ownership  in  this  place  of 
common  exile,  so  that  they  may  compel  their  fellow 
exiles  to  pay  them  for  sojourning  here,  and  that  this 
exclusive  ownership  they  may  transfer  to  other 
exiles  yet  to  come,  with  the  same  right  of  excluding 
their  fellows. 


110  THE  CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

You  tell  U8  that  virtue  is  the  common  inheritance 
of  all ;  that  all  men  are  children  of  God  the  common 
Father ;  that  all  have  the  same  last  end ;  that  all  are 
redeemed  by  Jesus  Christ;  that  the  blessings  of 
nature  and  the  gifts  of  grace  belong  in  common  to 
all,  and  that  to  all  except  the  unworthy  is  promised 
the  inheritance  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  !  Yet  in 
all  this  and  through  all  this  you  insist  as  a  moral  duty 
on  the  maintenance  of  a  system  that  makes  the  reser- 
voir of  all  God's  material  bounties  and  blessings  to 
man  the  exclusive  property  of  a  few  of  their  num- 
ber— you  give  us  equal  rights  in  heaven,  but  deny  us 
equal  rights  on  earth  ! 

It  was  said  of  a  famous  decision  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  made  just  before  the  civil 
war,  in  a  fugitive  slave  case,  that  "  it  gave  the  law  to 
the  North  and  the  nigger  to  the  South.''  It  is  thus 
that  your  Encyclical  gives  the  gospel  to  laborers  and 
the  earth  to  the  landlords.  Is  it  really  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  there  are  those  who  sneeringly  say  "  The 
priests  are  ready  enough  to  give  the  poor  an  equal 
share  in  all  that  is  out  of  sight,  but  they  take  precious 
good  care  that  the  rich  shall  keep  a  tight  grip  on  all 
that  is  within  sight." 

Herein  is  the  reason  why  the  working  masses  all 
over  the  world  are  turning  away  from  organized  re- 
ligion. 

And  why  should  they  not  ?  What  is  the  office  of 
religion  if  not  to  point  out  the  principles  that  ought 
to  govern  the  conduct  of  men  towards  each  other ;  to 
furnish  a  clear,  decisive  rule  of  right  which  shall 
guide  men  in  all  the  relations  of  life — in  the  work- 


OPEK  LETTEH  TO  POPE  LEO  Xm.       Ill 

sliop,  in  the  mart,  in  the  forum  and  in  the  senate,  as 
well  as  in  the  church ;  to  supply,  as  it  were,  a  com- 
pass by  which  amid  the  blasts  of  passion,  the  aberra- 
tions of  greed  and  the  delusions  of  a  short-sighted 
expediency  men  may  safely  steer  ?  What  is  the  use 
of  a  religion  that  stands  palsied  and  paltering  in  the 
face  of  the  most  momentous  problems?  What  is 
the  use  of  a  religion  that  whatever  it  may  promise  for 
the  next  world  can  do  nothing  to  prevent  injustice  in 
this?  Early  Christianity  was  not  such  a  religion, 
else  it  would  never  have  encountered  the  Roman 
persecutions ;  else  it  would  never  have  swept  the 
Roman  world.  The  sceptical  masters  of  Rome,  tol- 
erant of  all  gods,  careless  of  what  they  deemed  vulgar 
superstitions,  were  keenly  sensitive  to  a  doctrine 
based  on  equal  rights ;  they  feared  instinctively  a  re- 
ligion that  inspired  slave  and  proletarian  with  a  new 
hope  ;  that  took  for  its  central  figure  a  crucified  car- 
penter ;  that  taught  the  equal  fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  equal  brotherhood  of  men ;  that  looked  for  the 
speedy  reign  of  justice,  and  that  prayed,  "  Thy  King- 
dom come  on  Earth  !  " 

To-day,  the  same  perceptions,  the  same  aspirations, 
exist  among  the  masses.  Man  is,  as  he  has  been 
called,  a  religious  animal,  and  can  never  quite  rid 
himself  of  the  feeling  that  there  is  some  moral  gov- 
ernment of  the  world,  some  eternal  distinction  be- 
tween wrong  and  right ;  can  never  quite  abandon  the 
yearning  for  a  reign  of  righteousness.  And  to-day, 
men  who,  as  they  think,  have  cast  off  all  belief  in  re- 
ligion, will  tell  you,  even  though  they  know  not  what 
it  is,  that  with  regard  to  the  condition  of  labor  some- 


112  THE  CONDITION   OF  LABOK. 

thing  is  wrong!  If  theology  be,  as  St.  Thomas  of 
Aquin  held  it,  the  sum  and  focus  of  the  sciences,  is  it 
not  the  business  of  religion  to  say  clearly  and  fear- 
lessly what  that  wrong  is  ?  It  was  by  a  deep  impulse 
that  of  old  when  threatened  and  perplexed  by  gen- 
eral disaster  men  came  to  the  oracles  to  ask,  In  what 
have  we  offended  the  gods  ?  To-day,  menaced  by 
growing  evils  that  threaten  the  very  existence  of  soci- 
ety, men,  conscious  that  something  is  wrong^  are  put- 
ting the  same  question  to  the  ministers  of  religion. 
What  is  the  answer  they  get  ?  Alas,  with  few  ex- 
ceptions, it  is  as  vague,  as  inadequate,  as  the  answers 
that  used  to  come  from  heathen  oracles. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  masses  of  men  are  losing 
faith  ? 

Let  me  again  state  the  case  that  your  Encyclical 
presents : 

What  is  that  condition  of  labor  which  as  you  truly 
say  is  "  the  question  of  the  hour,"  and  "  fills  every 
mind  with  painful  apprehension  ?"  Reduced  to  its 
lowest  expression  it  is  the  poverty  of  men  willing  to 
work.  And  what  is  the  lowest  expression  of  this 
phrase  ?  It  is  that  they  lack  bread — for  in  that  one 
word  we  most  concisely  and  strongly  express  all  the 
manifold  material  satisfactions  needed  by  humanity, 
the  absence  of  which  constitutes  poverty. 

Now  what  is  the  prayer  of  Christendom — the  uni- 
versal pr.iyer :  the  prayer  that  goes  up  daily  and 
hourly  wherever  the  name  of  Christ  is  honored ;  that 
ascends  from  your  Holiness  at  the  high  altar  of  St. 
Peter's,  and  that  is  repeated  by  the  youngest  child 


OPEN    LETTEK   TO   P0PJ5   LEO   XIII.  113 

that  the  poorest  Christian  mother  has  taught  to  lisp  a 
request  to  her  Father  in  Heaven  ?  It  is,  "  Give  us 
this  day  our  daily  bread ! " 

Yet  where  this  prayer  goes  up,  daily  and  hourly,  men 
lack  bread.  Is  it  not  the  business  of  religion  to  say 
why  ?  If  •  it  cannot  do  so,  shall  not  scoffers  mock  its 
ministers  as  Elias  mocked  the  prophets  of  Baal,  say- 
ing, "  Cry  with  a  louder  voice,  for  he  is  a  god ;  and  per- 
haps he  is  talking,  or  is  in  an  inn,  or  on  a  journey  or 
perhaps  he  is  asleep,  and  must  be  awaked !"  What 
answer  can  those  ministers  give  ?  Either  there  is  no 
God,  or  He  is  asleep,  or  else  He  does  give  men  their 
daily  bread,  and  it  is  in  some  way  intercepted. 

Here  is  the  answer,  the  only  true  answer  :  If  men 
lack  bread  it  is  not  that  God  has  not  done  His  part 
in  providing  it.  If  men  willing  to  labor  are  cursed 
with  poverty,  it  is  not  that  the  storehouse  that  God 
owes  men  has  failed ;  that  the  daily  supply  He  has 
promised  for  the  daily  wants  of  His  children  is  not 
here  in  abundance.  It  is,  that  impiously  violating 
the  benevolent  intentions  of  their  Creator,  men  have 
made  land  private  property,  and  thus  given  into  the 
exclusive  ownership  of  the  few  the  provision  that  a 
bountiful  Father  has  made  for  all. 

Any  other  answer  than  that,  no  matter  how  it  may 
be  shrouded  in  the  mere  forms  of  religion,  is  practi- 
cally an  atheistical  answer. 


I  have  written  this  letter  not  alone  for  your  Holi- 
ness, but  for  all  whom  I  may  hope  it  to  reach.  But 
in  sending  it  to  you  personally,  and  in  advance  of 
publication,  I  trust  that  it  may  be  by  you  person- 


114  THE  CONDITION  OF   LABOB. 

ally  read  and  weighed.  In  setting  forth  the  grounds 
of  our  belief  and  in  pointing  out  considerations  which 
it  seems  to  us  you  have  unfortunately  overlooked,  I 
have  written  frankly,  as  was  my  duty  on  a  matter  of 
such  momentous  importance,  and  as  I  am  sure  you 
would  have  me  write.  But  I  trust  I  have  done  so 
without  offence.  For  your  office  I  have  profound 
respect,  for  yourself  personally  the  highest  esteem. 
And  M'hile  the  views  I  have  opposed  seem  to  us 
erroneous  and*  dangerous,  we  do  not  wish  to  be  un- 
derstood as  in  the  slighest  degree  questioning  either 
your  sincerity  or  intelligence  in  adopting  them.  For 
they  are  views  all  but  universally  held  by  the  pro- 
fessed religious  teachers  of  Christendom,  in  all  com- 
munions and  creeds,  and  that  have  received  the 
sanction  of  those  looked  to  as  the  wise  and  learned. 
Under  the  conditions  that  have  surrounded  you,  and 
under  the  pressm*e  of  so  many  high  duties  and 
responsibilities,  culminating  in  those  of  your  present 
exalted  position,  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  you 
should  have  hitherto  thought  to  question  them.  But 
I  trust  that  the  considerations  herein  set  forth  may 
induce  you  to  do  so,  and  even  if  the  burdens  and 
cares  that  beset  you  shall  now  make  impossible  the 
careful  consideration  that  should  precede  expression 
by  one  in  your  responsible  position  I  trust  that  what 
I  have  written  may  not  be  without  use  to  others. 

And,  as  I  have  said,  we  are  deeply  grateful  for 
your  Encyclical,  It  is  much  that  by  so  conspicuously 
calling  attention  to  the  condition  of  labor,  you  have 
recalled  the  fact  forgotten  by  so  many  that  the  social 
evils  and  problems  of  our  time  directly  and  pressingly 


OPEN  LETTER  TO  POPE  LEO  XIII.       115 

concern  the  Churcli.  It  is  much  that  you  should  thus 
have  placed  the  stamp  of  your  disapproval  on  that 
impious  doctrine  which  directly  and  by  implication 
has  been  so  long  and  so  widely  preached  in  the  name 
of  Christianity,  that  the  sufferings  of  the  poor  are 
due  to  mysterious  decrees  of  Providence  which  men 
may  lament  but  cannot  alter.  Your  Encyclical  will 
be  seen  by  those  who  carefully  analyze  it  to  be 
directed  not  against  socialism,  which  in  moderate  form 
you  favor,  but  against  what  we  in  the  United  States 
call  the  single  tax.  Yet  we  have  no  solicitude  for 
the  truth  save  that  it  shall  be  brought  into  discussion, 
and  we  recognize  in  your  Holiness'  Encyclical  a  most 
efficient  means  of  promoting  discussion,  and  of  pro- 
moting discussion  along  the  lines  that  we  deem  of 
the  greatest  importance — the  lines  of  morality  and  re- 
ligion. In  this  you  deserve  the  gratitude  of  all  who 
would  follow  truth,  for  it  is  of  the  nature  of  truth 
always  to  prevail  over  error  where  discussion  goes  on. 

And  the  truth,  for  which  we  stand  has  now  made 
such  progress  in  the  minds  of  men  that  it  must  be 
heard ;  that  it  can  never  be  stifled ;  that  it  must  go  on 
conquering  and  to  conquer.  Far  off  Australia  leads 
the  van,  and  has  already  taken  the  first  steps  towards 
the  single  tax.  In  Great  Britain,  in  the  United  States, 
and  in  Canada,  the  question  is  on  the  verge  of  prac- 
tical politics  and  soon  will  be  the  burning  issue  of 
the  time.  Continental  Europe  cannot  long  linger  be- 
hind.    Faster  than  ever  the  world  is  moving. 

Forty  years  ago  slavery  seemed  stronger  in  the 
United  States  than  ever  before,  and  the  market  price 
of  slaves — both  working  slaves  and  breeding  slaves — 


116  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

was  higher  than  it  had  ever  been  before,  for  the  title  of 
the  owner  seemed  growing  more  secure.  In  the 
shadow  of  the  Hall  where  the  equal  rights  of  man 
had  been  solemnly  proclaimed,  the  manacled  fugitive 
was  dragged  back  to  bondage,  and  on  what  to 
American  tradition  was  our  Marathon  of  freedom, 
the  slave  master  boasted  that  he  would  yet  call  the 
roll  of  his  chattels. 

Yet  forty  years  ago,  though  the  party  that  was  to 
place  Abraham  Lincoln  in  the  Presidential  chair  had 
not  been  formed,  and  nearly  a  decade  was  yet  to  pass 
ere  the  signal  gun  was  to  ring  out,  slavery,  as  we  may 
now  see,  was  doomed. 

To-day  a  wider,  deeper,  more  beneficent  revolution 
is  brooding,  not  over  one  country,  but  over  the  world. 
God's  truth  impels  it,  and  forces  mightier  than  He 
has  ever  before  given  to  man  urge  it  on.  It  is  no 
more  in  the  power  of  vested  wrongs  to  stay  it  than  it 
is  in  man's  power  to  stay  the  sun.  The  stars  in  their 
courses  fight  against  Sisera,  and  in  the  ferment  of  to- 
day, to  him  who  hath  ears  to  hear,  the  doom  of 
industrial  slavery  is  sealed. 

Where  shall  the  dignitaries  of  the  Church  be  in 
the  struggle  that  is  coming,  nay  that  is  already  here  ? 
On  the  side  of  justice  and  liberty,  or  on  the  side  of 
wrong  and  slavery  ?  with  the  delivered  when  the  tim- 
brels shall  sound  again,  or  with  the  chariots  and  the 
horsemen  that  again  shall  be  engulfed  in  the  sea  ? 

As  to  the  masses,  there  is  little  fear  where  they  will 
be.  Already,  among  those  who  hold  it  with  religious 
fervor,  the  single  tax  counts  great  numbers  of  Cath- 
olics, many  priests,  secular  and  regular,  and  at  least 


OPEN  LETTEK  TO  POPE  LEO  XIII.        117 

some  bishops,  while  there  is  no  communion  or  denomi- 
nation of  the  many  into  which  English  speaking 
Christians  are  divided  where  its  advocates  are  not  to 
be  found. 

Last  Sunday  evening  in  the  New  York  church  that 
of  all  churches  in  the  world  is  most  richly  endowed,  I 
saw  the  cross  carried  through  its  aisles  by  a  hundred 
choristers,  und  heard  a  priest  of  that  English  branch 
of  the  Church  that  three  hundred  years  since  was  sep- 
arated from  your  obedience,  declare  to  a  great  congre- 
gation that  the  labor  question  was  at  bottom  a  relig- 
ious question ;  that  it.  could  only  be  settled  on  the 
basis  of  moral  right;  that  the  lirst  and  clearest  of 
rights  is  the  equal  right  to  the  use  of  the  physical 
basis  of  all  life ;  and  that  no  human  titles  could 
set  aside  God's  gift  of  the  land  to  all  men. 

And  as  the  Cross  moved  by,  and  the  choristers  sang, 

"  Raise  ye  the  Christian's  war-cry — 
The  Cross  of  Christ  the  Lord  !" 

men  to  whom  it  was  a  new  thing  bowed  their  heads, 
and  in  hearts  long  steeled  against  the  Church,  as  the 
willing  handmaid  of  oppression,  rose  the  "  God  wills 
it !"  of  the  gi-andest  and  mightiest  of  crusades. 

Servant  of  the  Servants  of  God !  I  call  you  by  the 
strongest  and  sweetest  of  your  titles.  In  your  hands 
more  than  in  those  of  any  living  man  lies  the  power 
to  say  the  word  and  make  the  sign  that  shall  end 
an  unnatural  divorce,  and  marry  again  to  religion  all 
that  is  pure  and  high  in  social  aspiration 

Wishing  for  your  Holiness  the  chiefest  of  all  bless- 
ings, that  you  may  know  tb^  trutli  and  bo  freed  by 


118  THE    CONDITIOJf   OF    LABOR. 

the  truth  ;  wishing  for  you  the  days  and  the  strength 
that  may  enable  you  by  the  great  service  you  may 
render  to  humanity  to  make  your  pontificate  througli 
all  coming  time, most  glorious ;  and  with  the  profound 
respect  due  to  your  personal  character  and  to  your  ex- 
alted office,  I  am, 

Tours  sincerely, 

HicNKr  Gexjbgk. 


Kew  York,  September  11, 1891. 


APPEKDIX 


Encyclical  Letter 


POPE  LEO  XIII. 


THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR 


OFFICIAL  TRANSLATIOJH 


To  our  Venerable  Brethren,  all  Patriarchs,  Primates, 
Archbishojps,  and  Bishops  of  the  Catholic  World, 
in  grace  and  commymon  with  the  Apostolic  See, 
Pope  Leo  XII I. 

Venerable    Brethren,    Health    and   Apostolic 
Benediction. 

1.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  spirit  of  revolutionary 
change,  which  has  so  long  been  predominant  in  the 
nations  of  the  world,  should  have  passed  beyond 
politics  and  made  its  influence  felt  in  the  cognate  field 
of  practical  economy.  The  elements  of  a  conflict  are 
unmistakable :  the  growth  of  industry,  and  the  sur- 
prising discoveries  of  science  ;  the  changed  relations  of 
masters  and  workmen  ;  the  enormous  fortunes  of  indi- 
viduals, and  the  poverty  of  the  masses  ;  the  increased 
self-reliance  and  the  clx)ser  mutual  combination  of  the 
working  population ;  and,  finally,  a  general  moral 
deterioration.  The  momentous  seriousness  of  the  pre- 
sent state  of  things  just  now  fills  every  mind  with 
painful  apprehension  ;  wise  men  discuss  it ;  practical 
men  propose  schemes ;  popular  meetings,  legislatures, 
and  sovereign  princes,  all  are  occupied  with  it — and 
there  is  nothing  which  has  a  deeper  hold  on  public 
attention, 

2.  Therefore,  Venerable  Brethren,  as  on  former 
occasions,  when  it  seemed  opportune  to  refute  false 
teaching,  We  have  addressed  you  in  the  interest  of  the 
Church  and  of  the  common  weal,  and  have  issued 
Letters  on  Political  Power,  on  Human  Liberty,  on  the 
Christian  Constitution  of  the  State,  and  on  similar  sub- 
jects, so  now  we  have  thought  it  useful  to  speak  on  the 
Condition  of  Labor.    It  is  a  matter  on  which  We 


122  THE  CONDITION   OF    LABOB. 

have  touched  once  or  twice  already.  But  in  this  Letter 
the  responsibility  of  the  Apostolic  office  urges  Us  to 
treat  the  question  expressly  and  at  length,  in  order 
that  there  may  be  no  mistake  as  to  the  principles 
which  truth  and  justice  dictate  for  its  settlement.  The 
discussion  is  not  easy,  nor  is  it  free  from  danger.  It  is 
not  easy  to  define  the  relative  rights  and  the  mutual 
duties  of  the  wealthy  and  of  the  poor,  of  capital  and  of 
labor.  And  the  danger  lies  in  this,  that  crafty  agi- 
tators constantly  make  use  of  these  disputes  to  pervert 
men's  judgments  and  to  stir  up  the  people  to  sedition. 

3.  But  all  agree,  and  there  can  be  no  question  what- 
ever, that  some  remedy  must  be  found,  and  quickly 
found,  for  the  misery  and  wretchedness  which  press  so 
heavily  at  this  moment  on  the  large  majority  of  the 
very  poor.  The  ancient  workmen's  Guildes  were  de- 
stroyed in  the  last  century,  and  no  other  organization 
took  their  place.  Public  institutions  and  the  laws  havo 
repudiated  the  ancient  religion.  Hence  by  degrees  it 
has  come  to  pass  that  Working-Men  have  been  given 
over,  isolated  and  defenseless,  to  the  callousness  of  em- 
ployers, and  the  greed  of  unrestrained  competition. 
The  evil  has  been  increased  by  rapacious  Usury,  which, 
although  more  than  once  condemned  by  the  Church,  is 
nevertheless,  under  a  different  form  but  with  the  same 
guilt,  still  practiced  by  avaricious  and  grasping  men. 
And  to  this  must  be  added  the  custom  of  working  by 
contract,  and  the  concentration  of  so  many  branches 
of  trade  in  the  hands  of  u  few  individuals,  so  that  a 
small  number  of  very  rich  men  have  been  able  to  lay 
upon  the  masses  of  the  poor  a  yoke  little  better  than 
slavery  itself. 

4.  To  remedy  these  evils  the  Socialists,  working  on 
the  poor  man's  envy  of  the  rich,  endeavor  to  destroy 
private  property,  and  maintain  that  individual  posses- 
sions should  become  the  common  property  of  all,  to  be 
administered  by  the  State  or  by  municipal  bodies. 
They  hold  that,  by  thus  transferring  property  from 
private  persons  to  the  community,  the  present  evil  state 
of  things  will  be  set  to  rights,  because  each  citizen  will 
then  have  his  equal  share  of  whatever  there  is  to  <'n  joy. 
But  their  proposals  g,re  so  clearly  futile  for  all  practi- 


BNOTCLICAL   LETTEK   OF   POPE   LEO    XIII.  123 

cal  purposes,  that  if  they  were  carried  out  the  working- 
man  himself  would  be  among  the  first  to  suffer.  More- 
over they  are  emphatically  unjust,  because  they  would 
rob  the  lawful  possessor,  bring  the  State  into  a  sphere 
that  is  not  its  own,  and  cause  complete  confusion  in 
the  community. 

5.  It  is  surely  undeniable  that,  when  a  man  engages 
in  remunerative  labor,  the  very  reason  and  motive  of 
his  work  is  to  obtain  property,  and  to  hold  it  as  his  own 
private  possession.  If  one  man  hires  out  to  another  his 
strength  or  his  industry,  he  does  this  for  the  purpose 
of  receiving  in  return  what  is  necessary  for  food  and 
living  ;  he  thereby  expressly  proposes  to  acquire  a  full 
and  real  right,  not  only  to  the  remuneration,  but  also 
to  the  disposal  of  that  remuneration  as  he  pleases. 
Thus,  if  he  lives  sparingly,  saves  money,  and  invests 
his  savings,  for  greater  security,  in  land,  the  land  in 
such  a  case  is  only  his  wages  in  another  form  ;  and  con- 
sequently, a  working  man's  little  estate  thus  purchased 
should  be  as  completely  at  his  own  disposal  as  the 
wages  he  receives  for  his  labor.  But  it  is  precisely  in 
this  power  of  disposal  that  ownership  consists,  whether 
the  property  be  land  or  movable  goods.  The  Socialists, 
therefore,  in  endeavoring  to  transfer  the  possessions  of 
individuals  to  the  community,  strike  at  the  interests  of 
every  wage-earner,  for  they  deprive  him  of  the  liberty 
of  disposing  of  his  wages,  and  thus  of  all  hope  and  pos- 
sibility of  increasing  his  stock  and  of  bettering  his  con- 
dition in  life. 

6.  What  is  of  still  greater  importance,  however,  is 
that  the  remedy  they  propose  is  manifestly  against  jus- 
tice. For  every  man  has  by  nature  the  right  to  possess 
property  as  his  own.  This  is  one  of  the  chief  points  of 
distinction  between  man  and  the  animal  creation.  For 
the  brute  has  no  power  of  self-direction,  but  is  gov- 
erned by  two  chief  instincts,  which  keep  his  powers 
alert,  move  him  to  use  his  strength,  and  determine  him 
to  action  without  the  power  of  choice.  These  instincts 
are  self-preservation  and  the  propagation  of  the  species. 
Both  can  attain  their  purpose  by  means  of  things  which 
are  close  at  hand  ;  beyond  their  surroundings  the  brute 
creation  cannot  go,  for  they  are  moved  to  action  by 


124  THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOR. 

sensibility  alone,  and  by  the  things  which  sense  per- 
ceives. But  with  man  it  is  different  indeed.  He  pos- 
sesses, on  the  one  hand,  the  full  perfection  of  animal 
nature,  and  therefore  he  enjoys,  at  least  as  much  as  the 
rest  of  the  animal  race,  the  fruition  of  the  things  of  the 
body.  But  animality,  however  perfect,  is  far  from 
being  the  whole  of  humanity,  and  is  indeed  humanity's 
humble  handmaid,  made  to  serve  and  obey.  It  is  the 
mind,  or  the  reason,  which  is  the  chief  thing  in  us  who 
are  human  beings  ;  it  is  this  which  makes  a  human 
being  human,  and  distinguishes  him  essentially  and 
completely  from  the  brute.  And  on  this  account — viz., 
that  man  alone  among  animals  possesses  reason — it  must 
be  within  his  right  to  have  things  not  merely  for  tem- 
porary and  momentary  use,  as  other  living  beings  have 
them,  but  in  stable  and  permanent  possession  ;  he  must 
have  not  only  things  which  perish  in  the  using,  but 
also  those  which,  though  used,  remain  for  use  in  the 
future. 

7.  This  becomes  still  more  clearly  evident  if  we 
consider  man's  nature  a  little  more  deeply.  For  man, 
comprehending  by  the  power  of  his  reason  things  in- 
numerable, and  joming  the  future  with  the  present — 
being,  moreover,  the  master  of  his  own  acts — governs 
himself  by  the  foresight  of  his  counsel,  under  the  eter- 
nal law  and  the  power  of  God,  Whose  Providence  gov- 
erns all  things  ;  wherefore  it  is  in  his  power  to  exercise 
his  choice  not  only  on  things  which  regard  his  present 
welfare,  but  also  on  those  which  will  be  for  his  advant- 
age in  time  to  come.  Hence  man  not  only  can  possess 
the  fruits  of  the  earth,  but  also  the  earth  itself  ;  for  of 
the  products  of  the  earth  he  can  make  provision  for  the 
future.  Man's  needs  do  not  die  out,  but  recur  ;  satis- 
fied to-day,  they  demand  new  supplies  to-morrow.  Na- 
ture, therefore,  owes  to  man  a  storehouse  that  shall 
never  fail,  the  daily  supply  of  his  daily  wants.  And  this 
he  finds  only  in  the  inexhaustible  fertility  of  the  earth. 

8.  Nor  must  we,  at  this  stage,  have  recourse  to  the 
State.  Man  is  older  than  the  State  ;  and  he  holds  the 
right  of  providing  for  the  life  of  his  body  prior  to  the 
formation  of  any  State.  And  to  say  that  God  lias  given 
the  earth  tQ  the  use  ?ind  en joyraent  of  the  universal  hu- 


ENCYCLICAL  LIltTEE  0?  POPE   LEO  Xlll.  125 

man  race  is  not  to  deny  that  tliere  can  be  private  prop- 
erty. For  God  has  granted  the  earth  to  mankind  m 
general ;  not  in  the  sense  that  all  without  distinction 
can  deal  with  it  as  they  please,  but  rather  that  no  part 
of  it  has  been  assigned  to  any  one  in  particular,  and 
that  the  limits  of  private  possession  have  been  left  to 
be  fixed  by  man's  own  industry  and  the  laws  of  indi- 
vidual peoples.  Moreover  the  earth,  though  divided 
among  private  owners,  ceases  not  thereby  to  minister 
to  the  needs  of  all  ;  for  there  is  no  one  who  does  not 
live  on  what  the  land  brings  forth.  Those  who  do  not 
possess  the  soil,  contribute  their  labor  ;  so  that  it  may 
be  truly  said  that  all  human  subsistence  is  dejived  either 
from  labor  on  one's  own  land,  or  from  some  laborious 
industry  which  is  paid  for  either  in  the  produce  of  the 
land  itself  or  in  that  which  is  exchanged  for  what  the 
land  brings  forth. 

9.  Here,  again,  we  have  another  proof  that  private 
ownership  is  according  to  nature's  law.  For  that  which 
is  required  for  the  preservation  of  life,  and  for  life's 
well  being,  is  produced  in  great  abundance  by  the  earth, 
but  not  until  man  has  brought  it  into  cultivation  and 
lavished  upon  it  his  care  and  skill.  Now,  when  man 
thus  spends  the  industry  of  his  mind  and  the  strength 
of  his  body  in  procuring  the  fruits  of  nature,  by  that 
act  he  makes  his  own  that  portion  of  nature's  field 
which  he  cultivates — that  portion  on  which  he  leaves, 
as  it  were,  the  impress  of  his  own  personality  ;  and  it 
cannot  but  be  just  that  he  should  possess  that  portion  as 
his  own,  and  should  have  a  right  to  keep  it  without 
molestation. 

10.  These  arguments  are  so  strong  and  convincing 
that  it  seems  surprising  that  certain  obsolete  opinions 
should  now  be  revived  in  opposition  to  what  is  here  laid 
down.  We  are  told  that  it  is  right  for  private  persons 
to  have  the  use  of  the  soil  and  the  fruits  of  their  land, , 
but  that  it  is  unjust  for  any  one  to  possess  as  owner 
either  the  land  on  which  he  has  built  or  the  estate 
which  he  has  cultivated.  But  those  who  assert  this  do 
not  perceive  that  they  are  robbing  man  of  what  his  own 
labor  has  produced.  For  the  soil  which  is  tilled  and 
cultivated  with  toil  and  skill  utterly  changes  its  con- 


126  THE  COKtHtlON  Of  labok. 

dition;  it  was  wild  before,  it  is  now  fruitful  ;  it  was 
barren,  and  now  it  brings  forth  in  abundance.  That 
which  has  thus  altered  and  improved  it  becomes  so 
truly  part  of  itself  as  to  be  in  great  measure  indistin- 
guishable and  inseparable  from  it.  Is  it  just  that  the 
fruit  of  a  man's  sweat  and  labor  should  be  enjoyed  by 
another?  As  effects  follow  their  cause,  so  it  is  just  and 
right  that  the  results  of  labor  should  belong  to  him  who 
has  labored. 

11.  With  reason,  therefore,  the  common  opinion  of 
mankind,  little  affected  by  the  few  dissentients  who 
have  maintained  the  opposite  view,  has  found  in  the 
study  of  nature,  and  in  the  law  of  Nature  herself,  the 
foundation  of  the  division  of  property,  and  has  conse- 
crated by  the  practice  of  all  ages  the  principle  of  pri- 
vate ownership,  as  being  pre-eminently  in  conformity 
with  human  nature,  and  as  conducing  in  the  most  un- 
mistakable manner  to  the  peace  and  tranquility  of  hu- 
man life.  The  same  principle  is  confirmed  and  enforced 
by  the  civil  laws — laws  which,  as  long  as  they  are  just, 
derive  their  binding  force  from  the  law  of  nature.  The 
authority  of  the  Divine  Law  adds  its  sanction,  forbid- 
ding us  in  the  gravest  terms  even  to  covet  that  which  is 
another's: — Thou  shall  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  wife; 
nor  his  house,  nor  his  field,  nor  his  man-servant,  nor  his 
maid-servant,  nor  his  ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor  anything 
zvhich  is  his* 

12.  The  rights  here  spoken  of,  belonging  to  each  in- 
dividual man,  are  seen  in  a  much  stronger  light  if  they 
are  considered  in  relation  to  man's  social  and  do- 
mestic obligations. 

13.  In  choosing  a  state  of  life,  it  is  indisputable  that 
all  are  at  full  liberty  either  to  follow  the  counsel  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  to  the  virginity,  or  to  enter  into  the 
bonds  of   marriage.     No  human  law  can  abolish   the 

•  natural  and  primitive  right  of  marriage,  or  in  any  way 
limit  the  chief  and  principal  purpose  of  marriage, 
ordained  by  God's  authority  from  the  beginning  :  in- 
crease and  multipli/.  f  Thus  we  have  the  Family  ;  the 
"society"  of  a  man's  own  household  ;  a  society  limited 

*  Deuteronomy  v.,  21.        t  Genesis  i.,  28. 


fiKCYCLlCAL    LETTEE   OF   tOPE    LEO    Xlll  127 

indeed  in  numbers,  but  a  true  *' society,"  anterior  to 
every  kind  of  State  or  nation,  with  rights  and  duties  of 
its  own,  totally  independent  of  the  commonwealth. 

14.  That  right  of  property,  therefore,  which  has  been 
proved  to  belong  naturally  to  individual  persons,  must 
also  belong  to  a  man  in  his  capacity  of  head  of  a  family; 
nay,  such  a  person  must  possess  tliis  right  so  much  the 
more  clearly  in  proportion  as  his  position  multiplies 
his  duties.  For  it  is  a  most  sacred  law  of  nature  that 
a  father  must  provide  food  and  all  necessaries  for  those 
whom  he  has  begotten  ;  and,  similarly,  nature  dictates 
that  a  man's  children,  who  carry  on,  as  it  were,  and 
continue  his  own  personality,  should  be  provided  by 
him  with  all  that  is  needful  to  enable  them  honorably 
to  keep  themselves  from  want  and  misery  in  the  un- 
certainties of  this  mortal  life.  Now,  in  no  other  way 
can  a  father  effect  this  except  by  the  ownership  of 
profitable  property,  which  he  can  transmit  to  his  chil- 
dren by  inheritance.  A  family,  no  less  than  a  State,  is, 
as  "We  have  said,  a  true  society,  governed  by  a  power 
within  itself,  that  is  to  say  by  the  father.  Wherefore, 
provided  the  limits  be  not  transgressed  which  are  pre- 
scribed by  the  very  purposes  for  which  it  exists,  the 
Family  has  at  least  equal  rights  with  the  State  in  the 
choice  and  pursuit  of  those  things  which  are  needful 
to  its  preservation  and  its  just  liberty. 

15.  We  say,  at  least  equal  rights  ;  for  since  the 
domestic  household  is  anterior  both  in  idea  and  in  fact 
to  the  gathering  of  men  into  a  commonwealth,  the 
former  must  necessarily  have  rights  and  duties  which 
are  prior  to  those  of  tiie  latter,  and  which  rest  more 
immediately  on  nature.  If  the  citizens  of  a  State — that 
is  to  say,  the  Families — on  entering  into  association  and 
fellowship,  experienced  at  the  hands  of  the  State  hin- 
drance instead  of  help,  and  found  their  rights  attacked 
instead  of  being  protected,  such  association  were  rather 
to  be  repnriiaied  than  sought  after. 

16.  The  idea,  then,  that  the  civil  government  should, 
at  its  own  discretion,  penetrate  and  pervade  the  family 
and  the  household,  is  a  great  and  pennVious  mistake. 
True,  if  a  family  finds  itself  in  great  difficulty,  utterly 
friendless,  and  without  prosneot  of  help,  it  is  right 


12S  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

that  extreme  necessity  be  met  by  public  aid  ;  for  each 
family  is  a  part  of  tlie  commonwealth.  In  like  man- 
ner, if  within  the  walls  of  the  household  there  occur 
grave  disturbance  of  mutual  rights,  the  public  power 
must  interfere  to  force  each  party  to  give  the  other 
what  is  due  ;  for  this  is  not  to  rob  citizens  of  their 
rights,  but  justly  and  properly  to  safeguard  and 
strengthen  them.  But  the  rulers  of  the  State  must  go 
no  further  :  nature  bids  thorn  stop  here.  Paternal 
authority  can  neither  be  abolished  by  the  State,  nor 
absorbed  ;  for  it  has  the  same  source  as  human  life 
itself.  "  The  child  belongs  to  the  father,"  and  is,  as  it 
were,  the  continuation  of  the  fathers  personality ; 
and,  to  speak  with  strictness,  the  child  takes  its  place 
in  civil  society  not  in  itu  own  right,  but  in  its  quality 
as  a  member  of  the  family  in  which  it  is  begotten. 
And  it  is  for  the  very  reason  that  ''the  child  belongs  to 
the  father"  that,  as  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin  says,  "be- 
fore it  attains  the  use  of  free-will,  it  is  in  the  power 
and  care  of  its  parents."*  The  Socialists,  therefore,  in 
setting  aside  the  parent  and  introducing  the  providence 
of  the  State,  act  agamst  natural  justice,  and  threaten 
the  very  existence  of  family  life. 

17.  And  such  interference  is  not  only  unjust,  but  it 
is  quite  certain  to  harass  and  disturb  all  classes  of 
citizens  and  to  subject  them  to  odious  and  intolerable 
slavery.  It  would  open  the  door  to  envy,  to  evil  speak- 
ing, and  to  quarreling  ;  the  sources  of  wealth  would 
themselves  run  dry,  for  no  one  would  have  any  interest 
in  exerting  his  talents  or  his  industry  ;  and  that  ideal 
equality  of  which  so  much  is  said  would  in  reality  be 
the  levelling  down  of  all  to  the  same  condition  of  misery 
and  dishonor. 

18.  Thus  it  is  clear  that  the  main  tenet  of  Socialism, 
the  community  of  goods,  must  be  utterly  rejected  ;  for 
it  would  injure  those  whom  it  is  intended  to  benefit,  it 
would  be  contrary  to  the  natural  rights  of  mankind,  and 
it  would  introduce  confusion  and  disorder  into  the  com- 
monwealth. Our  first  and  most  fundamental  principle, 
therefore,  when  we  undertake  to  alleviate  the  condition 

*St.  Thomas,  Summa  Theologica,  2a  2ae  Q.  x.  Art.  12. 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTER  OF  POPE  LEO  Xlll.  129 

of  the  masses,  must  be  the  inviolability  of  private  prop- 
erty. This  laid  down.  We  go  on  to  show  where  We 
must  find  the  remedy  that  We  seek. 

19.  We  approach  the  subject  with  confidence,  and  in 
the  exercise  of  the  rights  which  belong  to  Us.  For  no 
practical  solution  of  this  question  will  ever  be  found 
without  the  assistance  of  Keligion  and  of  the  Church. 
It  is  We  who  are  the  chief  guardian  of  Religion  and  the 
chief  dispenser  of  what  belongs  to  the  Church,  and  We 
must  not  by  silence  neglect  the  duty  which  lies  upon 
Us.  Doubtless  this  most  serious  question  demands  the 
attention  and  the  efforts  of  others  besides  Ourselves — 
of  the  rulers  of  States,  of  employers  of  labor,  of  the 
wealthy,  and  of  the  working  population  themselves  for 
whom  We  plead.  But  We  affirm  without  hesitation, 
that  all  the  striving  of  men  will  be  vain  if  they  leave 
out  the  Church.  It  is  the  Church  that  proclaims  from 
the  Gospel  those  teachings  by  which  the  conflict  can  be 
put  an  end  to,  or  at  the  least  made  far  less  bitter  ;  the 
Church  uses  its  efforts  not  only  to  enlighten  the  mind, 
but  to  direct  by  its  precepts  the  life  and  conduct  of 
men  ;  the  Church  improves  and  ameliorates  the  condi- 
tion of  the  workingman  by  numerous  useful  organiza- 
tions ;  does  its  best  to  enlist  the  services  of  all  ranks  in 
discussing  and  endeavoring  to  meet,  in  the  most  prac- 
tical way,  the  claims  of  the  working  classes  ;  and  acts 
on  the  decided  view  that  for  these  purposes  recourse 
should  be  had,  in  due  measure  and  degree,  to  the  help 
of  the  law  and  of  State  authority. 

20.  Let  it  be  laid  down,  in  the  first  place,  that 
humanity  must  remain  as  it  is.  It  is  impossible  to  re- 
duce human  society  to  a  level.  The  Socialists  may  do 
their  utmost,  but  all  striving  against  nature  is  vain. 
There  naturally  exist  among  mankind  innumerable 
differences  of  the  most  important  kind  ;  people  differ 
in  capability,  in  diligence,  in  health,  and  in  strength  ; 
and  unequal  fortune  is  a  necessary  result  of  inequality 
in  condition.  Such  inequality  is  far  from  being  dis- 
advantageous either  to  individuals  or  to  the  com- 
munity ;  social  and  public  life  can  only  go  on  by  the 
help  of  various  kinds  of  capacity  and  the  playing  of 
many  parts  ;  and  each  man,  as  a  rule,  chooses  the  part 


130  THE   CONDIXlOJSr   OF   LABOR. 

which  peculiarly  suits  his  case.  As  regards  bodily 
labor,  even  had  man  never  fallen  from  the  state  of  in- 
nocence, he  would  not  have  been  wholly  unoccupied  ; 
but  that  which  would  then  have  been  his  free  choice 
and  his  delight,  became  afterwards  compulsory,  and 
the  painful  expiation  of  his  sin.  Cursed  be  the  earth  in 
thy  work  ;  in  thy  labor  thou  shalt  eat  of  it  all  the  days 
of  thy  life.*  In  like  manner,  the  other  pains  and  hard- 
ships of  life  will  have  no  end  or  cessation  on  this  earth  ; 
for  the  consequences  of  sin  are  bitter  and  hard  to  bear, 
and  they  must  be  with  man  as  long  as  life  lasts.  To 
suffer  and  to  endure,  therefore,  is  the  lot  of  humanity ; 
let  men  try  as  they  may,  no  strength  and  no  artifice 
will  ever  succeed  in  banishing  from  human  life  the  ills 
and  troubles  which  beset  it.  If  any  there  are  who  pre- 
tend differently — who  hold  out  to  a  hard-pressed  people 
freedom  from  pain  and  trouble,  undisturbed  repose, 
and  constant  enjoyment — they  cheat  the  people  and 
impose  upon  them,  and  their  lying  promises  will  only 
make  the  evil  worse  than  before.  There  is  nothing 
more  useful  than  to  look  at  the  world  as  it  really  is — 
and  at  the  same  time  to  look  elsewhere  for  a  remedy  to 
its  troubles. 

21.  The  great  mistake  that  is  made  in  the  matter  now 
under  consideration  is  to  possess  one's  self  of  the  idea 
that  class  is  naturally  hostile  to  class  ;  that  rich  and 
poor  are  intended  by  nature  to  live  at  war  with  one  an- 
other. So  irrational  and  so  false  is  this  view,  that  the 
exact  contrary  is  the  truth.  Just  as  the  symmetry  of 
the  human  body  is  the  result  of  the  disposition  of  the 
members  of  the  body,  so  in  a  state  it  is  ordained  by 
nature  that  these  two  classes  should  exist  in  harmony 
and  agreement,  and  should,  as  it  were,  fit  into  one  an- 
other, so  as  to  maintain  the  equilibrium  of  the  body 
politic.  Each  requires  the  other  ;  capital  cannot  do 
without  labor,  nor  labor  without  capital.  Mutual 
agreemsnt  results  in  pleasantness  and  good  order  ;  per- 
petual conflict  necessarily  produces  confusion  and  out- 
rage. Now,  in  preventing  such  strife  as  this,  and  in 
making  it  impossible,  the  efficacy   of  Christianity   is 

♦Genesis  iii.,  17. 


ENCYCLICAL  LETTER  OV   l^Ol'E  LEO  XIH.    131 

marvelous  and  manifold.  First  of  all,  there  is  nothing 
more  powerful  than  Religion  (of  which  the  Church  is 
the  interpreter  and  guardian)  in  drawing  rich  and  poor 
together,  by  reminding  each  class  of  its  duties  to  the 
other,  and  especially  of  the  duties  of  justice.  Thus 
Religion  teaches  the  laboring  man  and  the  workman  to 
carry  out  honestly  and  well  all  equitable  agreements 
freely  made  ;  never  to  injure  capital,  or  to  outrage  the 
person  of  an  employer  ;  never  to  employ  violence  in  re- 
presenting his  own  cause,  or  to  engage  in  riot  or  disor- 
der ;  and  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  men  of  evil  prin- 
ciples, who  work  upon  the  people  with  artful  promises, 
and  raise  foolish  hopes  which  usually  end  in  disaster 
and  in  repentance  when  too  late.  Religion  teaches  the 
rich  man  and  the  employer  that  their  work  people  are 
not  their  slaves  ;  that  they  must  respect  in  every  man 
his  dignity  as  a  man  and  as  a  Christian  ;  that  labor  is 
nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,  if  we  listen  to  right  reason  and 
to  Christian  philosophy,  but  is  an  honorable  employ- 
ment, enabling  a  man  to  sustain  his  life  in  an  upright 
and  creditable  way  ;  and  that  it  is  shameful  and  in- 
human to  treat  men  like  chattels  to  make  money  by, 
or  to  look  upon  them  merely  as  so  much  muscle  or  phy- 
sical power.  Thus,  again.  Religion  teaches  that,  as 
among  the  workman's  concerns  are  Religion  herself  and 
things  spiritual  and  mental,  the  employer  is  bound  to 
see  that  he  has  time  for  the  duties  of  piety  ;  that  he  be 
not  exposed  to  corrupting  influences  and  dangerous  oc- 
casions ;  and  that  he  be  not  led  away  to  neglect  his 
home  and  family  or  to  squander  his  wages.  Then, 
again,  the  employer  must  never  tax  his  work  people  be- 
yond their  strength,  nor  employ  them  in  work  unsuited 
to  their  sex  or  age.  His  great  and  principal  obliga- 
tion is  to  give  to  every  one  that  which  is  just.  Doubt- 
less before  we  can  decide  whether  wages  are  adequate, 
many  things  have  to  be  considered  ;  but  rich  men 
and  masters  should  remember  this — that  to  exercise 
pressure  for  the  sake  of  gain  upon  the  indigent  and  the 
destitute,  and  to  make  one's  profit  out  of  the  need  of 
another  is  condemned  by  all  laws,  human  and  divine. 
To  defraud  any  one  of  wages  that  are  his  duels  a  crime 
which  cries  to  the  avenging  anger  of  Heaven.     Behold, 


132  THE   CONDITIOlf   OF   LABOR. 

the  hire  of  the  laborers  .  .  .  which  hy  fraud  hath 
been  kept  back  by  you,  crieth  ;  and  the  cry  of  tliem  hath 
entered  into  the  ears  of  the  Lord  of  Sabaoth*  Finally, 
the  rich  must  religiously  refrain  from  cutting  down  the 
workman's  earnings,  either  by  force,  by  fraud,  or  by 
usurious  dealing  ;  and  with  the  more  reason  because 
the  poor  man  is  weak  and  unprotected,  and  because  his 
slender  means  should  be  sacred  in  proportion  to  their 
scantiness. 

22.  Were  these  prospects  carefully  obeyed  and  fol- 
lowed, would  not  strife  die  out  and  cease? 

23.  But  the  Church,  with  Jesus  Christ  for  its  Master 
and  Guide,  aims  higher  still.  It  lays  down  precepts 
yet  more  perfect,  and  tries  to  bind  class  to  class  in 
friendliness  and  good  understanding.  The  things  of 
this  earth  cannot  be  understood  or  valued  rightly  with- 
out taking  into  consideration  the  life  to  come,  the  life 
that  will  last  for  ever.  Exclude  the  idea  of  futurity, 
and  the  very  notion  of  what  is  good  and  right  would 
perish  ;  nay,  the  whole  system  of  the  universe  would 
become  a  dark  and  unfathomable  mystery.  The  great 
truth  which  we  learn  from  Nature  herself  is  also  the 
grand  Christain  dogma  on  which  Religion  rests  as  on 
its  base — that  when  we  have  done  with  this  present  life 
then  shall  we  really  begin  to  live.  God  has  not  created 
us  for  the  perishable  and  transitory  things  of  earth, 
but  for  things  heavenly  and  everlasting  ;  He  has  given 
us  this  world  as  a  place  of  exile,  and  not  as  our  true 
country.  Money,  and  the  other  things  which  men  call 
good  and  desirable — we  may  have  them  in  abundance, 
or  we  may  want  them  altogether  ;  as  far  as  eternal  hap- 
piness is  concerned,  it  is  no  matter  ;  the  only  thing 
that  is  important  is  to  use  them  aright.  Jesus  Christ, 
when  he  redeemed  us  with  j)^&ntiful  redemption,  took 
not  away  the  pains  and  sorrows  which  in  such  large 
proportion  make  up  the  texture  of  our  mortal  life  ;  He 
transformed  them  into  motives  of  virtue  and  occasions 
of  merit ;  and  no  man  can  hope  for  eternal  reward  un- 
less he  follow  in  the  blood-stained  footprints  of  his 
Saviour.     Jf  we  suffer  with  Him,  we  shall  also  reigii 

^'    ■  '    -  ■  — ■  — ■■■"        —  — '  — 

*  St.  James  v.,  4. 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTEK   OF   POPE   LEO   XIII.  133 

with  Him*  His  labors  anTi  his  sufferings,  accepted  by 
His  own  free-will,  have  marvelously  sweetened  all  suf- 
fering and  ail  labor.  And  not  only  by  his  example, 
but  by  His  grace  and  by  the  hope  of  everlasting  recom- 
pense. He  has  made  pain  and  grief  more  easy  to  endure  ; 
for  that  which  is  at  present  momentary  and  light  of  our 
tribulation,  worketh  for  us  above  measure  exceedingly 
a?i  eternal  weight  of  glory.  \ 

24.  Therefore  those  whom  fortune  favors  are  warned 
that  freedom  from  sorrow  and  abundance  of  earthly 
riches  are  no  guarantee  of  the  beatitude  that  shall 
never  end,  but  rather  the  contrary  ;  X  that  the  rich 
should  tremble  at  the  threatenings  of  Jesus  Christ — 
threatenings  so  strange  in  the  mouth  of  Our  Lord  ;  § 
and  that  a  most  strict  account  must  be  given  to  the 
Supreme  Judge  for  all  that  we  possess.  The  chiefest 
and  most  excellent  rule  for  the  right  use  of  money  is 
one  which  the  heathen  philosophers  indicated,  but 
which  the  Church  has  traced  out  clearly,  and  has  not 
only  made  known  to  men's  minds,  but  has  impressed 
upon  their  lives.  It  rests  on  the  principle  that  it  is 
one  thing  to  have  a  right  to  the  possession  of  money, 
and  another  to  have  a  right  to  use  money  as  one  pleases. 
Private  ownership,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  natural 
right  of  man  ;  and  to  exercise  that  right,  especially  as 
members  of  society,  is  not  only  lawful,  but  absolutely 
necessary.  It  is  lawful,  says  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin, /or 
a  man  to  hold  private  property  ;  and  it  is  also  necessary 
for  the  carrying  on  of  human  life.\  But  if  the  question 
be  asked.  How  must  one's  possessions  be  used  ?  the 
Church  replies  without  hesitation  in  the  words  of  the 
same  holy  Doctor  :  Man  should  not  consider  his  out- 
ward possessions  as  his  oiun,  but  as  commoti  to  all,  so  as  to 
share  them  without  difficulty  when  others  are  in  need. 
Whence  the  Apostle  saith,  Comma7id  the  rich  of  this 
world  .  .  .  to  give  with  ease,  to  communicate.%  True 
no  one  is  commanded  to  distribute  toothers  that  which 
is  required  for  his  own  necessities  and  those  of  his 
household  ;  nor  even  to  give  away  what  is   reasonably 

*Timolhy  ii.  12.    +  2  Corinthians  iv.  17.     X  St.  Matthew  xix.  23,  24, 

I  St.  Luke  vi.  24,  25.  1  2a  2ifi  Q.  Ixvi.  Art.  2. 

T  2a  2aB  Q.  Ixv.  Art.  2- 


134:  THE    CONDITION    OF   LABOR. 

required  to  keep  up  becomingly  his  condition  in  life  ; 
for  no  one  ought  to  live  u7ibecomingly.*  But  when 
necessity  has  been  supplied,  and  one's  position  fairly 
considered,  it  is  a  duty  to  give  to  the  indigent  out  of 
that  which  is  over.  Tliat  which  remaineth,  give  alms.\ 
It  is  a  duty,  not  of  justice  (except  in  extreme  cases), 
but  of  Christian  charity — a  duty  which  is  not  enforced 
by  human  law.  But  the  laws  and  judgments  of  men 
must  give  place  to  the  laws  and  judgments  of  Christ 
the  true  God,  Who  in  many  ways  urges  on  his  fol- 
lowers the  practice  of  almsgiving — It  is  more  blessed  to 
give  than  to  receive  ;X  and  Who  will  count  a  kindness 
done  or  refused  to  the  poor  as  done  or  refused  to  Him- 
self— as  long  as  you  did  it  to  one  of  My  least  brethren, 
you  did  it  to  Me.  §  Thus,  to  sum  up  what  has  been 
said  :  Whoever  has  received  from  the  Divine  bounty  a 
large  share  of  blessings,  whether  they  be  external  and 
corporeal  or  gifts  of  the  mind,  has  received  them  for 
the  purpose  of  using  them  for  the  perfecting  of  his 
own  nature,  and,  at  the  same  time,  that  he  may  em- 
ploy them,  as  the  minister  of  God's  Providence,  for  the 
benefit  of  others.  He  that  hath  a  talent,  says  St. 
Gregory  the  Great,  let  him  see  that  he  hide  it  not ;  he 
that  hath  abundance,  let  him  arouse  himself  to  mercy  and 
generosity ;  he  that  hath  art  and  skill,  let  him  do  his  best 
to  share  the  ^ise  and  utility  thereof  luith  his  neighbor.  || 

25.  As  for  those  who  do  not  possess  the  gifts  of  for- 
tune, they  are  taught  by  the  Church  that,  in  God'rf  sight 
poverty  is  no  disgrace,  and  that  there  is  nothing  to  be 
ashamed  of  in  seeking  one's  bread  by  labor.  This  is 
strengthened  by  what  we  see  in  Christ  Himself,  Who 
whereas  He  was  rich,  for  our  sakes  became  poor;  1  and 
Who,  being  the  Son  of  God,  and  God  Himself,  chose  to 
seem  and  to  be  considered  the  son  of  a  carpenter — nay, 
did  not  disdain  to  spend  a  great  part  of  His  life  as  a  car- 
penter Himself.  Is  not  this  the  carpenter,  the  Son  of 
Mary?  **  From  the  contemplation  of  this  Divine  ex- 
ample it  is  easy  to  understand  that  the  true  dignity  and 
excellence  of  man  lies  in  liis  moral  qualities,  that  is,  in 

*  Ibid.  Q.  xxxii.  Art.  6.    t  St.  Luke  xi.  41.    t  Acts  xx.  35. 

§  St.  Matthew  xxv.  40.     ||  St.  Gregory  th?  Great,  Horn.  ix.  in  Evangel,  n.  7. 

1  2  Corinthians  vjii. »,  ♦♦  gt.  Marls  vL  3. 


ENCYCLICAL  LETTEK  OF  POPE  LEO  XIII.     135 

virtue ;  that  virtue  is  the  common  inheritance  of  all, 
equally  within  the  reach  of  high  and  low,  rich  and 
poor;  and  that  virtue,  and  virtue  alone,  wherever 
found,  will  be  followed  by  the  rewards  of  everlasting 
happiness.  Nay,  God  Himself  seems  to  incline  more  to 
those  who  suffer  evil ;  for  Jesus  Christ  calls  the  poor 
blessed  ;  *  He  lovingly  invites  those  in  labor  and  grief 
to  come  to  Him  for  solace ;  f  and  He  displays  the  ten- 
derest  charity  to  the  lowly  and  the  oppressed.  These 
reflections  cannot  fail  to  keep  down  the  pride  of  those 
who  are  well  off,  and  tochefr  the  spirit  of  the  afflicted  ; 
to  incline  the  former  to  generosity  and  the  latter  to 
tranquil  resignation.  Thus  the  separation  which  pride 
would  make  tends  to  disappear,  nor  will  it  be  difficult 
to  make  rich  and  poor  join  hands  in  friendly  concord. 

26.  But,  if  Christian  precepts  prevail,  the  two 
classes  will  not  only  be  united  in  the  bonds  of  friend- 
ship but  also  in  those  of  brotherly  love.  For  they  will 
understand  and  feel  tiiat  all  men  are  the  children  of 
the  common  Father,  that  is,  of  God  ;  tha^  all  have  the 
same  last  end,  which  is  God  Himself,  Who  alone  can 
make  either  men  or  angels  absolutely  and  perfectly 
happy  ;  that  all  and  each  are  redeemed  by  Jesus  Christ 
and  raised  to  the  dignity  of  children  of  God,  and  are 
thus  united  in  brotherly  ties  both  with  each  other  and 
with  Jesus  Christ,  the  firstboryi  among  many  hrethern; 
that  the  blessings  of  nature  and  the  gifts  of  grace  be- 
long in  common  to  the  whole  human  race,  and  that  to 
all,  except  to  those  that  are  unworthy,  is  promised  the 
inheritance  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  If  sons,  heirs 
also;  heirs  indeed  of  God,  and  co-heirs  of  Christ.X 

27.  Such  is  the  scheme  of  duties  and  of  rights  which 
is  put  forth  to  the  world  by  the  Gospel.  Would  it  not 
seem  that  strife  must  quickly  cease  were  society  pene- 
trated with  ideas  like  these  ? 

28.  But  the  Church,  not  content  with  pointing  out 
the  remedy,  also  applies  it.  For  the  Church  does  its 
utmost  to  teach  and  to  train  men,  and  to  educate  them  ; 

*  St  Matthew  v.  3:    "  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit." 
t  Ilnd.  xi.  28:    "  Come  to  Me  all  you  that  labor  and  are  ImrdeMd,  and  J  will 
refresh  you.'''' 
^Romans  viii.  17. 


136  THE   CONDITION    OF   LABOR. 

and  by  means  of  its  Bishops  and  Clergy  it  diffuses  its 
salutary  teachings  far  and  wide.  It  strives  to  influence 
the  mind  and  heart  so  that  all  may  willingly  yield 
themselves  to  be  formed  and  guided  by  the  command- 
ments of  God.  It  is  precisely  in  this  fundamental  and 
principal  mutter,  on  which  everything  depends,  that 
the  Church  has  a  power  peculiar  to  itself.  The  agencies 
which  it  employs  are  given  it  for  the  very  purpose  of 
reaching  the  hearts  of  men,  by  Jesus  Christ  Himself, 
and  derive  their  efficiency  from  God.  They  alone  can 
touch  the  innermost  heart  and  conscience,  and  bring 
men  to  act  from  a  motive  of  duty,  to  resist  their 
passions  and  appetites,-  to  love  God  and  their  fellow- 
men  with  a  love  that  is  unique  and  supreme,  and 
courageously  to  break  down  every  barrier  which  stands 
in  the  way  of  a  virtuous  life. 

29.  On  this  subject  We  need  only  recall  for  one  mo- 
ment the  examples  written  down  in  history.  Of  these 
things  there  cannot  be  the  shadow  of  doubt ;  for  in- 
stance, that  civil  society  was  renovated  in  every  part  by 
the  teachings  of  Christianity  ;  that  in  the  strength  of 
that  renewal  the  human  race  was  lifted  up  to  better 
things — nay,  that  it  was  brought  back  from  death  to 
life,  and  to  so  excellent  a  life  that  nothing  more  perfect 
had  been  known  before,  or  will  come  to  pass  in  the  ages 
that  have  yet  to  be.  Of  this  beneficent  transformation 
Jesus  Christ  was  at  once  the  first  cause  and  the  final 
purpose  ;  as  from  Him  all  came,  so  to  Him  all  was  to 
be  referred.  For  when,  by  the  light  of  the  Gospel  mes- 
sage, the  human  race  came  to  know  the  grand  mystery 
of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Word  and  the  redemption  of 
man,  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  God  and  Man,  penetrated 
every  race  and  nation,  and  impregnated  them  with 
His  faith,  His  precepts,  and  His  laws.  And  if  Society 
is  to  be  cured  now,  in  no  other  way  can  it  be  cured 
but  by  a  return  to  the  Christian  life  and  Christian  in- 
stitutions. When  a  society  is  perishing,  the  true  advice 
to  give  to  those  who  would  restore  it  is,  to  recall  it  to 
the  principles  from  which  it  sprung  ;  for  the  purpose 
and  perfection  of  an  association  is  to  aim  at  and  to 
attain  that  for  which  it  was  formed  ;  and  its  operation 
should  be  put  in  motion  and  inspired  by  the  end  and 


ENCYCLICAL    LETTER   OF    POPE    LEO   XIH.  137 

object  which  originally  gave  it  its  being.  So  that  to 
fall  away  from  its  primal  constitution  is  disease  ;  to  go 
back  to  it  is  recovery.  And  this  may  be  asserted  with 
the  utmost  truth  both  of  the  State  in  general  and  of 
that  body  of  its  citizens — by  far  the  greater  number — 
who  sustain  life  by  labor. 

30.  Neither  must  it  be  supposed  that  the  solicitude  of 
the  Church  is  so  occupied  with  the  spiritual  concerns 
of  its  children  as  to  neglect  their  interests  temporal 
and  earthly.  Its  desire  is  that  the  poor,  for  example, 
should  rise  above  poverty  and  wretchedness,  and  should 
better  their  condition  in  life ;  and  for  this  it  strives.  By 
the  very  fact  that  it  calls  men  to  virtue  and  forms  them 
to  its  practice,  it  promotes  this  in  no  slight  degree. 
Christian  morality,  when  it  is  adequately  and  completely 
practiced,  conduces  of  itself  to  temporal  prosperity,  for 
it  merits  the  blessing  of  that  God  Who  is  the  source  of 
all  blessings  ;  it  powerfully  restrains  the  lust  of  posses- 
sion and  the  lust  of  pleasure — twin  plagues,  which  too 
often  make  a  man  without  self-restraint  miserable  in  the 
midst  of  abundance*;  it  makes  men  supply  by  economy 
for  the  want  of  means,  teaching  them  to  be  content 
with  frugal  living,  and  keeping  them  out  of  the  reach 
of  those  vices  which  eat  up  not  merely  small  incomes, 
but  large  fortunes,  and  dissipate  many  a  goodly  inherit- 
ance. 

31.  Moreover,  the  Church  intervenes  directly  in  the 
interest  of  the  poor,  by  setting  on  foot  and  keeping  up 
many  things  which  it  sees  to  be  efficacious  in  the  relief 
of  poverty.  Here  again  it  has  always  succeeded  so  well 
that  it  has  even  extorted  the  praise  of  its  enemies.  Such 
was  the  ardor  of  brotherly  love  among  the  earliest 
Christians  that  numbers  of  those  who  were  better  off  de- 
prived themselves  of  their  possessions  in  order  to  re- 
lieve their  brethren  ;  whence  neither  was  there  any  one 
needy  among  them\.  To  the  order  of  Deacons,  insti- 
tuted for  that  very  purpose,  was  committed  by  the 
Apostles  the  charge  of  the  daily  distributions  ;  and  the 
Apostle  Paul,   though   burdened  with  the  solicitude  of 

•  "  Therootqfall  evils  is  cupidity:'—!  Tim.  vi.  10. 
tActsiT.  34. 


138  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOE. 

all  the  churches,  hesitated  not  to  undertake  laborious 
journeys  in  order  to  carry  the  alms  of  the  faithful  to 
the  poorer  Christians.  Tertullian  calls  these  contribu- 
tions, given  voluntarily  by  Christians  in  their  assem- 
blies, deposits  of  piety;  because,  to  cite  his  words,  they 
were  employed  in  feeding  the  needy,  in  burying  them, 
in  the  support  of  boys  and  girls  destitute  of  means  and 
deprived  of  their  parents,  in  the  care  of  the  aged  and  in 
the  relief  of  the  shipivrecked.  * 

32.  Thus  by  degrees  came  into  existence  the  patri- 
mony which  the  church  has  guirded  with  religious  care 
as  the  inheritance  of  the  poor.  Nay,  to  spare  them  the 
shame  of  begging,  the  common  Mother  of  rich  and 
poor  has  exerted  herself  to  gather  together  funds  for 
the  support  of  the  needy.  The  Church  has  stirred  up 
everywhere  the  heroism  of  charity,  and  has  established 
Congregations  of  Religious  and  many  other  useful  in- 
stitutions for  help  and  mercy,  so  that  there  might  be 
hardly  any  kind  of  suffering  which  was  not  visited  and 
relieved.  At  the  present  day  there  are  many  who,  like 
the  heathen  of  old,  blame  and  condemn  the  Church  for 
this  beautiful  charity.  They  would  substitute  in  its 
place  a  system  of  State-organized  relief.  But  no  human 
methods  will  ever  supply  for  the  devotion  and  self- 
sacrifice  of  Christian  charity.  Charity,  as  a  virtue,  be- 
longs to  the  Church  ;  for  it  is  no  virtue  unless  it  is 
drawn  from  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  Christ  ;  and  he 
who  turns  his  back  on  the  Church  cannot  be  near  to 
Christ. 

33.  It  cannot,  however,  be  doubted  that  to  attain  the 
purpose  of  which  We  treat,  noc  only  the  Church,  but 
all  human  means  must  conspire.  All  who  are  con- 
cerned in  the  matter  must  be  of  one  mind  and  must 
act  together.  It  is  in  this,  as  in  the  Providence  which 
governs  the  world  ;  results  do  not  happen  save  where 
all  the  causes  cooperate. 

34.  Let  us  now,  therefore,  inquire  what  part  the 
State  should  play  in  the  work  of  remedy  and  relief. 

35.  By  the  State  We  hero  understand,  not  the  partic- 
ular form  of  government  which  prevails  in  this  or  that 

*  Apologia  Secunda,  xxxix. 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTEK  OF   POPE   LEO   XIII.  139 

nation,  but  the  State  as  rightly  understood;  that  is  to 
say,  any  government  conformable  in  its  institutions  to 
riglit  reason  and  natural  law,  and  to  those  dictates  of 
the  Divine  wisdom  which  We  have  expounded  in  the 
Encyclical  on  the  Christian  Constitution  of  the  State. 
The  first  duty,  therefore,  of  the  rulers  of  the  S  ate 
should  be  to  make  sure  that  the  laws  and  institutions, 
the  general  character  and  administration  of  the  com- 
monwealth, shall  be  such  as  to  produce  of  themselves 
public  well-being  and  private  prosperity.  This  is  the 
proper  ofl&ce  of  wise  statesmanship  and  the  work  of  the 
heads  of  the  State.  Now,  a  State  chiefly  prospers  and 
flourishes  by  morality,  by  well  regulated  family  life,  by 
respect  for  religion  and  justice,  by  the  moderation  and 
equal  distribution  of  public  burdens,  by  the  progress  of 
the  arts  and  of  trade,  by  the  abundant  yield  of  the 
land — by  everything  which  makes  the  citizens  better 
and  happier.  Here,  then,  it  is  in  the  power  of  a  ruler 
to  benefit  every  order  of  the  State,  and  amongst  the 
rest  to  promote  in  the  highest  degree  the  interests  of 
the  poor  ;  and  this  by  virtue  of  his  ofl&ce,  and  without 
being  exposed  to  any  suspicion  of  undue  interference — 
for  it  is  the  province  of  the  commonwealth  to  consult 
for  the  common  good.  And  the  more  that  is  done  for 
the  working  population  by  the  general  laws  of  the 
country,  the  less  need  will  there  be  to  seek  for  particular 
means  to  relieve  them. 

36.  There  is  another  and  a  deeper  consideration  which 
must  not  be  lost  sight  of.  To  the  State  the  interests  of 
all  are  equal,  whetlier  high  or  low.  The  poor  are 
members  of  the  national  community  equally  with  the 
rich  ;  they  are  real  component  parts,  living  parts, 
which  make  up,  through  the  family,  the  living  body  : 
and  it  need  hardly  be  said  that  they  are  by  far  the 
majority.  It  would  be  irrational  to  neglect  one  portion 
of  the  citizens  and  to  favor  another  ;  and  therefore  the 
public  administration  must  duly  and  solicitously  pro- 
vide for  the  welfare  and  the  comfort  of  the  working 
people,  or  else  that  law  of  justice  will  be  violated 
which  ordains  that  each  shall  have  his  due.  To  cite 
the  wise  words  of  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin  :  As  the  pari 
and  the  whole  are  in  a  certain  sense  identical,  the  part 


140  THE    CONDITION   OF   LABOB. 

may  in  some  sense  claim  what  belongs  to  tlie  loTiole.* 
Among  the  many  and  grave  duties  of  rulers  who  would 
do  their  best  for  the  people,  the  first  and  chief  is  to  act 
with  strict  justice — with  that  justice  which  is  called  in 
the  Schools  distributive — towards  each  and  every  class. 

37.  But  although  all  citizens,  without  exception,  can 
and  ought  to  contribute  to  that  common  good  in  which 
individuals  share  so  profitably  to  themselves,  yet  it  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  all  can  contribute  in  the  same 
way  and  to  the  same  extent.  No  matter  what  changes 
may  be  made  in  forms  of  government,  there  will  always 
be  differences  and  inequalities  of  condition  in  the  State: 
Society  cannot  exist  or  be  conceived  without  them. 
Some  there  must  be  who  dedicate  themselves  to  the 
work  of  the  commonwealth,  who  make  the  laws,  who 
administer  justice,  whose  advice  and  authority  govern 
the  nation  in  times  of  peace,  and  defend  it  in  war. 
Such  men  clearly  occupy  the  foremost  place  in  the 
State,  and  should  be  held  in  the  foremost  estima- 
tion, for  their  work  touches  most  nearly  and  effect- 
ively the  general  interests  of  the  community.  Those 
who  labor  at  a  trade  or  calling  do  not  promote  the 
general  welfare  in  such  a  fashion  as  this  ;  but  they 
do  in  the  most  important  way  benefit  the  nation, 
though  less  directly.  "We  have  insisted  that,  since  it  is 
the  end  of  society  to  make  men  better,  the  chief  good 
that  Society  can  be  possessed  of  is  Virtue.  Neverthe- 
Icvss,  in  all  well  constituted  States  it  is  a  by  no  means 
unimportant  matter  to  provide  those  bodily  and  exter- 
nal commodities,  the  use  of  which  is  necessary  to  virtu- 
ous action.^  And  in  the  provision  of  material  well 
being,  the  labor  of  the  poor — the  exercise  of  their  skill 
and  the  employment  of  their  strength  in  the  culture  of 
the  land  and  the  workshojis  of  trade — is  most  efficacious 
and  altogether  indispensable.  Indeed,  their  coopera- 
tion in  this  respect  is  so  important  that  it  may  be  truly 
said  that  it  is  only  by  the  labor  of  the  workingman 
that  States  grow  rich.  Justice,  therefore,  demands 
that  the  interests  of  the  poorer  population  be  carefully 

*  2a  2ffi  Q.  Ixi.    Art  1  ad  2. 
t  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin.    De  Regimine  Prindpium,  I.  cap.  15. 


BNCYCLICAL  LETl'ER  OP  J»OPE  LEO  XIH.         141 

watched  over  by  the  Administration,  so  that  they  who 
contribute  so  largely  to  the  advantage  of  the  commu- 
nity may  themselves  share  in  the  benefits  they  create — 
that  being  housed,  clothed,  and  enabled  to  support  life, 
they  may  find  their  existence  less  hard  and  more 
endurable.  It  follows  that  whatever  shall  appear  to  be 
conducive  to  the  well  being  of  those  who  work  should 
receive  favorable  consideration.  Let  it  not  be  feared 
that  solicitude  of  this  kind  will  injure  any  interest;  on 
the  contrary,  it  will  be  to  the  advantage  of  all ;  for  it 
cannot  but  be  good  for  the  commonwealth  to  secure 
from  misery  those  on  whom  it  so  largely  depends. 

38.  We  have  said  that  the  State  must  not  absorb  the 
individual  or  the  family;  both  should  be  allowed  free 
and  untrammelled  action  as  far  as  is  consistent  with 
the  common  good  and  the  interest  of  others.  Never- 
theless, rulers  should  anxiously  safeguard  the  com- 
munity and  all  its  parts  ;  the  community,  because  the 
conservation  of  the  community  is  so  emphatically  the 
business  of  the  supreme  power  that  the  safety  of  the 
commonwealth  is  not  only  the  first  law,  but  it  is  a 
Government's  whole  reason  of  existence;  and  the  parts, 
because  both  philosophy  and  the  gospel  agree  in  laying 
down  that  the  object  of  the  administration  of  the  State 
should  be,  not  the  advantage  of  the  ruler  but  the  bene- 
fit of  those  over  whom  he  rules.  The  gift  of  authority 
is  from  God,  and  is,  as  it  were,  a  participation  of  the 
highest  of  all  sovereignties  ;  and  it  should  be  exercised 
as  the  power  of  God  is  exercised — with  a  fatherly 
solicitude  which  not  only  guides  the  whole,  but  reaches 
to  details  as  well. 

39.  Whenever  the  general  interest  of  any  particular 
class  suffers,  or  is  threatened  with,  evils  which  can  in 
no  other  way  be  met,  the  public  authority  must  step  in 
to  meet  them.  Now,  among  the  interests  of  the  pub- 
lic, as  of  private  individuals,  are  these  :  that  peace  and 
good  order  should  be  maintained  ;  that  family  life 
should  be  carried  on  in  accordance  with  God's  laws  and 
those  of  nature  ;  that  religion  should  be  reverenced  and 
obeyed  ;  that  a  high  standard  of  morality  should  prevail 
in  public  and  private  life;  that  sanctity  of  justice  should 
be  respected,  and  that  no  one  should  injure  another 


142  THE  CONDITION  OF  LABOR. 

with  impunity;  that  the  members  of  the  commonwealth 
should  grow  up  to  man's  estate  strong  and  robust,  and 
capable,  if  need  be,  of  guarding  and  defending  their 
country.  If  by  a  strike,  or  other  combina^on  of  work- 
men, there  should  be  imminent  danger  of  disturbance 
to  the  public  peace;  or  if  circumstances  were  such 
that  among  the  laboring  population  the  ties  of  family 
life  were  relaxed;  if  Keligion  were  found  to  suifer 
through  the  workmen  not  having  time  and  opportunity 
to  practice  it;  if  in  workshops  and  factories  there  were 
danger  to  morals  through  the  mixing  of  the  sexes  or 
from  any  occasion  of  evil;  or  if  employers  laid  burdens 
upon  the  workmen  which  were  unjust,  or  degraded 
them  with  conditions  that  were  repugnant  to  their 
dignity  as  human  beings  ;  finally,  if  health  were  en- 
dangered by  excessive  labor,  or  by  work  unsuited  to  sex 
or  age — in  these  cases,  there  can  be  no  question  that, 
within  certain  limits,  it  would  be  right  to  call  in  the 
help  and  authority  of  the  law.  The  limits  must  be  de- 
termined by  the  nature  of  the  occasion  which  calls  for 
the  law's  interference — the  principle  being  this,  that 
the  law  must  not  undertake  more,  or  go  further,  than 
is  required  for  the  remedy  of  the  evil  or  the  removal  of 
the  danger. 

40.  Rights  must  be  religiously  respected  wherever 
they  are  found  ;  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  public  au- 
thority to  prevent  and  punish  injury,  and  to  protect 
each  one  in  the  possession  of  his  own.  Still,  when 
there  is  question  of  protecting  the  rights  of  individuals, 
the  poor  and  helpless  have  a  claim  to  special  consider- 
ation. The  richer  population  have  many  ways  of  pro- 
tecting themselves,  and  stand  less  in  need  of  help  from 
the  State  ;  those  who  are  badly  off  have  no  resources  of 
their  own  to  fall  back  upon,  and  must  chiefly  rely  upon 
the  assistance  of  the  State.  And  it  is  for  this  reason 
that  wage-earners,  who  are  undoubtedly  among  the 
weak  and  necessitous,  should  be  specially  cared  for  and 
protected  by  the  commonwealth. 

41.  Here,  however,  it  will  be  advisable  to  advert  ex- 
pressly to  one  or  two  of  the  more  important  details.  It 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  chief  thing  to  be  se- 
cured is  the  safeguarding,  by  legal   enactment    and 


EKCYCLICAL  LETTER  OP  POPE   LEO  XlH.  143 

policy,  of  private  property.  Most  of  all  is  it  ossential 
in  these  times  of  covetous  greed,  to  keep  the  mu]titu(^e 
within  the  line  of  duty  ;  for  if  all  may  justly  strive  to 
better  their  condition,  yet  neither  justice  nor  the  com- 
mon good  allows  any  one  to  seize  that  which  belongs 
to  another,  or,  under  the  pretext  of  futile  and  ridicu- 
lous equality,  to  lay  hands  on  other  people's  fortunes. 
It  is  most  true  that  by  far  the  larger  part  of  the  people 
who  work  prefer  to  improve  themselves  by  honest  labor 
rather  than  by  doing  wrong  to  others.  But  there  are 
not  a  few  who  are  imbued  with  bad  principles  and  are 
anxious  for  revolutionary  change,  and  whose  great  pur- 
pose it  is  to  stir  up  tumult  and  bring  about  a  policy  of 
violence.  The  authority  of  the  State  should  intervene 
to  put  restraint  upon  these  disturbers,  to  save  the 
workmen  from  their  seditious  arts,  and  to  protect  law- 
ful owners  from  spoliation. 

42.  When  work  people  have  recourse  to  a  strike,  itisfre- 
quently  because  the  hours  of  labor  are  too  long,  or  the 
work  toohard,  or  because  they  consider  their  wages  insuf- 
ficient. The  grave  inconvenience  of  this  not  uncommon 
occurrence  should  be  obviated  by  public  remedial  meas- 
ures; for  such  paralysis  of  labor  not  only  affects  the  mas- 
ters and  their  work  people,  but  is  extremely  injurious  to 
trade,  and  to  the  general  interests  of  the  public  ;  more- 
over, on  such  occasions,  violence  and  disorder  are  gen- 
erally not  far  off,  and  thus  it  frequently  happens  that 
the  public  peace  is  threatened.  The  laws  should  be 
beforehand,  and  prevent  these  troubles  from  arising  ; 
they  should  lend  their  influence  and  authority  to  the 
removal  in  good  time  of  the  causes  which  lead  to  con- 
flicts between  masters  and  those  whom  they  employ. 

43.  But  if  the  owners  of  property  must  be  made 
secure,  the  Workman,  too,  has  property  and  possessions 
in  which  he  must  be  protected  ;  and,  first  of  all,  there 
are  his  spiritual  and  mental  interests.  Life  on  earth, 
however  good  and  desirable  in  itself,  is  not  the  final 
purpose  for  which  man  is  created  ;  it  is  only  the  way 
and  the  means  to  that  attainment  of  truth,  and  that 
practice  of  goodness  in  which  the  full  life  of  the  soul 
consists.  It  is  the  soul  which  is  made  after  the  image 
and  likeness  of  God  ;  it  is  in  the  soul  that  sovereignty 


144  THE   CONDITION  OF   LaBOK. 

resides,  in  virtue  of  which  man  is  commanded  to  rule 
the  creatures  below  him,  and  to  use  all  the  earth  and 
the  ocean  for  his  profit  and  advantage.  Fill  tlie  earth 
and  subdue  it;  and  rule  over  the  fifdies  of  the  sea,  and 
thefoiols  of  the  air,  and  all  living  creatures  which  move 
ti,po?i  the  earth.*  In  this  respect  all  men  are  equal ; 
there  is  no  difference  between  rich  and  poor,  master 
and  servant,  ruler  and  ruled, /or  the  same  is  lord  over 
all.f  No  man  may  outrage  with  impunity  that  human 
dignity  which  God  Himself  treats  with  revere^ice,  nor 
stand  in  the  way  of  that  higher  life  which  is  the  prep- 
aration for  the  eternal  life  of  Heaven.  Nay,  more ;  a 
man  has  here  no  power  over  himself.  To  consent  to 
any  treatment  which  is  calculated  to  defeat  the  end  and 
purpose  of  his  being  is  beyond  his  right ;  he  cannot 
give  up  his  soul  to  servitude ;  for  it  is  not  man's  own 
rights  which  are  here  in  question,  but  the  rights  of 
God,  most  sacred  and  inviolable. 

44.  From  this  follows  the  obligation  of  the  cessation 
of  work  and  labor  on  Sundays  and  certain  festivals. 
This  rest  from  labor  is  not  to  be  understood  as  mere 
idleness  ;  much  less  must  it  be  an  occasion  of  spending 
money  and  of  vicious  excess,  as  many  would  desire  it 
to  be  ;  but  it  should  be  rest  from  labor  consecrated  by 
religion.  Repose  united  with  religious  observance  dis- 
poses man  to  forget  for  a  while  the  business  of  this 
daily  life,  and  to  turn  his  thoughts  to  heavenly  things 
and  to  the  worship  which  he  so  strictly  owes  to  the 
Eternal  Deity.  It  is  this,  above  all,  which  is  the  reason 
and  motive  of  the  Sunday  rest ;  a  rest  sanctioned  by 
God's  great  law  of  the  ancient  covenant.  Remember  thou 
keep  holy  the  Sabbath  Day,X  and  taught  to  the  world  by 
His  own  mysterious  "  rest  "  after  the  creation  of  man  ; 
He  rested  on  the  seventh  day  from  all  His  work  which 
He  had  done.% 

45.  If  we  turn  now  to  things  exterior  and  corporeal, 
the  first  concern  of  all  is  to  save  the  poor  workers  from 
the  cruelty  of  grasping  speculators,  who  use  human 
beings  as  mere  instruments  for  making  money.  It  is 
neither  justice  nor  humanity   so  to  grind  men  down 

*  Genesis  i.  28.     t  Romans  z.  12.    %  £sod.  xz.  8.    §  Genesis  ii.  3. 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTER  OF   POfE   LEO   Xlll.  14:5 

with  excessive  labor  as  to  stupefy  their  minds  and 
wear  out  their  bodies.  Man's  powers,  like  his  general 
nature,  are  limited,  and  beyond  these  limits  he  cannot 
go.  His  strength  is  developed  and  increased  by  use  and 
exercise,  but  only  on  condition  of  due  intermission  and 
proper  rest.  Daily  labor,  therefore,  must  be  so  regu- 
lated that  it  may  not  be  protracted  during  longer  hours 
than  strength  admits.  How  many  and  how  long  the 
intervals  of  rest  should  be,  will  depend  on  the  nature 
of  the  work,  on  circumstances  of  time  and  place,  and 
on  the  health  and  strength  of  the  workman.  Those 
who  labor  in  mines  and  quarries,  and  in  work  within 
the  bowels  of  the  earth,  should  have  shorter  hours  in 
proportion  as  their  labor  is  more  severe  and  more  try- 
ing to  health.  Then,  again,  the  season  of  the  year 
must  be  taken  into  account ;  for  not  unf requently  a 
kind  of  labor  is  easy  at  one  time  which  at  another  is  in- 
tolerable or  very  difficult.  Finally,  work  which  is 
suitable  for  a  strong  man  cannot  reasonably  be  re- 
quired from  a  woman  or  a  child.  And,  in  regard  to  chil- 
dren, great  care  should  be  taken  not  to  place  them  in 
workshops  and  factories  until  their  bodies  and  minds 
are  sufficiently  mature.  For  just  as  rough  weather  de- 
stroys the  buds  of  Spring,  so  too  early  an  experience  of 
life's  hard  work  blights  the  young  promise  of  a  child's 
powers,  and  makes  any  real  education  impossible. 
Women,  again,  are  not  suited  to  certain  trades  ;  for  a 
woman  is  by  nature  fitted  for  home  work,  and,  it  is  that 
which  is  best  adapted  at  once  to  preserve  her  modesty 
and  to  promote  the  good  bringing  up  of  children  and 
the  well  being  of  the  family.  As  a  general  principle  it 
may  be  laid  down  that  a  workman  ought  to  have  leis- 
ure and  rest  in  proportion  to  the  wear  and  tear  of  his 
strength  ;  for  the  waste  of  strength  must  be  repaired 
by  the  cessation  of  work. 

46.  In  all  agreements  between  masters  and  work 
people  there  is  always  the  condition,  expressed  or  un- 
derstood, that  there  be  allowed  proper  rest  for  soul  and 
body.  To  agree  in  any  other  sense  would  be  against 
what  is  right  and  just ;  for  it  can  never  be  right  or  just 
to  require  on  the  one  side,  or  to  promise  on  the  other. 


146  tfiE    CONDITION    OF    LABOR. 

the  giving  up  of  those  duties  which  a  man  owes  to  his 
God  and  to  himself. 

47.  We  now  approach  a  subject  of  very  great  import- 
ance, and  one  on  which,  if  extremes  are  to  be  avoided, 
right  ideas  are  absolutely  necessary.  Wages,  we  are 
told,  are  fixed  by  free  consent ;  and,  therefore,  the  em- 
ployer, when  he  pays  what  was  agreed  upon,  has  done 
his  part  and  is  not  called  upon  for  anything  further. 
The  only  way,  it  is  said,  in  which  injustice  could  hap- 
pen would  be  if  the  master  refused  to  pay  the  whole  of 
the  wages,  or  the  workman  would  not  complete  the 
work  undertaken  ;  when  this  happens  the  State  should 
intervene,  to  see  that  each  obtains  his  own — but  not 
under  any  other  circumstances. 

48.  This  mode  of  reasoning  is  by  no  means  convincing 
to  a  fair-minded  man,  for  there  are  important  considera- 
tions which  it  leaves  out  of  view  altogether.  To  labor 
is  to  exert  one's  self  for  the  sake  of  procuring  what  is 
necessary  for  the  purposes  of  life,  and  most  of  all  for 
self-preservation.  In  the  siveat  of  thy  hro2u  thou  shall 
eat  bread*  Therefore  a  man's  labor  has  two  notes  or 
characters.  First  of  all,  it  is  persotial,  for  the  exertion 
of  individual  power  belongs  to  the  individual  who  puts 
it  forth,  employing  this  power  for  that  personal  profit 
for  which  it  was  given.  Secondly,  man's  labor  is  neces- 
sary, for  without  the  results  of  labor  a  man  cannot  live; 
and  self-conservation  is  a  law  of  Nature,  which  it  is 
wrong  to  disobey.  Now,  if  we  were  to  consider  labor 
merely  so  far  as  it  is  personal,  doubtless  it  would  be 
within  the  workman's  right  to  accept  any  rate  of  wages 
whatever  ;  for  in  the  same  way  as  he  is  free  to  work  or 
not,  so  he  is  free  to  accept  a  small  remuneration  or  even 
none  at  all.  But  this  is  a  mere  abstract  supposition  ; 
the  labor  of  the  workingman  is  not  only  his  personal 
attribute,  but  it  is  necessary;  and  this  makes  all  the 
difference.  The  preservation  of  life  is  the  bounden 
duty  of  each  and  all,  and  to  fail  therein  is  a  crime.  It 
follows  that  each  one  has  a  right  to  procure  what  is  re- 
quired in  order  to  live,  and  the  poor  can  procure  it  in 
no  other  way  than  by  work  and  wages. 

*  Genesis  iii.  19. 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTEfi  OB'   f-OPE  LEO  XUI.         147 

49.  Let  it  be  granted  then  that,  as  a  rule,  work- 
man and  employer  should  make  free  agreements,  and 
in  particular  should  freely  agree  as  to  wages  ;  never- 
theless, there  is  a  dictate  of  nature  more  imperious  and 
more  ancient  than  any  bargain  between  man  and  man, 
that  the  remuneration  must  be  enough  to  support  the 
wage-earner  in  reasonable  and  frugal  comfort.  If 
through  necessity  or  fear  of  a  worse  evil  the  workman 
accepts  harder  conditions  because  an  employer  or  a 
contractor  will  give  him  no  better,  he  is  the  victim  of 
force  and  injustice.  In  these  and  similar  questions, 
however — such  as,  for  example,  the  hours  of  labor  in 
different  trades,  the  sanitary  precautions  to  be  ob- 
served in  factories  and  workshops,  etc. — in  order  to 
supersede  undue  interference  on  the  part  of  the  State, 
especially  as  circumstances,  times,  and  localities  differ 
so  widely,  it  is  advisable  that  recourse  be  had  to  Soci- 
eties or  Boards  such  as  We  shall  mention  presently,  or 
to  some  other  method  of  safeguarding  the  interests  of 
wage  earners ;  the  State  to  be  asked  for  approval  and 
protection. 

50.  If  a  workman's  wages  be  suflBcient  to  enable  him 
to  maintain  himself,  his  wife,  and  his  children  in  rea- 
sonable comfort,  he  will  not  find  it  difficult,  if  he  is  a 
sensible  man,  to  study  economy;  and  he  will  not  fail, 
by  cutting  down  expenses,  to  put  by  a  little  prop- 
erty; nature  and  reason  would  urge  him  to  this.  We 
have  seen  that  this  great  Labor  question  cannot  be 
solved  except  by  assuming  as  a  principle  that  private 
ownership  must  be  held  sacred  and  inviolable.  The 
law,  therefore,  should  favor  ownership,  and  its  policy 
should  be  to  induce  as  many  of  the  people  as  possible 
to  become  owners. 

51.  Many  excellent  results  will  follow  from  this;  and 
first  of  all,  property  will  certainly  become  more  equit- 
ably divided.  For  the  effect  of  civil  change  and  re- 
volution has  been  to  divide  society  into  two  widely  dif- 
fering castes.  On  the  one  side,  there  is  the  party 
which  holds  the  power  because  it  holds  the  wealth  ; 
which  has  in  its  grasp  all  labor  and  all  trade,  which 
manipulates  for  its  own  benefit  and  its  own  purposes 
all  the  sources  of  supply,  and  which  is  powerfully  rep- 


148  THE   CONDITION   OF   LAiiOE. 

resented  in  the  councils  of  the  State  itself.  On  the 
other  side  there  is  the  needy  and  powerless  multitude, 
sore  and  suffering,  and  always  ready  for  disturbance. 
If  working  people  can  be  encouraged  to  look  forward 
to  obtaining  a  share  in  the  land,  the  result  will  be  that 
the  gulf  between  vast  wealth  and  deep  poverty  will  be 
bridged  over,  and  the  two  orders  will  be  brought 
nearer  together.  Another  consequence  will  be  the 
greater  abundance  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth.  Men  al- 
ways work  harder  and  more  readily  when  they  work  on 
that  which  is  their  own;  nay,  they  learn  to  love  the  very 
soil  which  yields  in  response  to  the  labor  of  their  hands, 
not  only  food  to  eat,  but  an  abundance  of  good  things 
for  themselves  and  those  that  are  dear  to  them.  It  is 
evident  how  such  a  spirit  of  willing  labor  would  add  to 
the  produce  of  the  earth  and  to  the  wealth  of  the  com- 
munity. And  a  third  advantage  Avould  arise  from  this: 
men  would  cling  to  the  country  in  which  they  were 
born;  for  no  one  would  exchange  his  country  for  a 
foreign  land  if  his  own  afforded  him  the  means  of  liv- 
ing a  tolerable  and  happy  life.  These  three  important 
benefits,  however,  can  only  be  expected  on  the  condi- 
tion that  a  man's  means  be  not  drained  and  exhausted 
by  excessive  taxation.  The  right  to  possess  private 
property  is  from  nature,  not  from  man;  and  the  State 
has  only  the  right  to  regulate  its  use  in  the  interests  of 
the  public  good,  but  by  no  means  to  abolish  it  alto- 
gether. The  State  is  therefore  unjust  and  cruel  if,  in 
the  name  of  taxation,  it  deprives  the  private  owner  of 
more  than  is  just. 

52.  In  the  last  place — employers  and  workmen  may 
themselves  effect  much  in  the  matter  of  which  We 
treat,  by  means  of  those  institutions  and  organizations 
which  afford  opportune  assistance  to  those  in  need,  and 
which  draw  the  two  orders  more  closely  together. 
Among  these  may  be  enumerated  :  Societies  for  mutual 
help  ;  various  foundations  established  by  private  per- 
sons for  providing  for  the  workman,  and  for  his  widow 
or  his  orphans,  in  sudden  calamity,  in  sickness,  and  in 
the  event  of  death  ;  and  what  are  called  ''patronages" 
or  institutions  for  the  care  of  boys  and  girls,  for  young 
people  and  also  for  those  of  more  mature  age. 


ENCYCLICAL    LETTEE   OF   POPE    LEO   XIII.  149 

53.  The  most  important  of  all  are  Workmen's  Asso- 
ciations ;  foi  these  virtually  include  all  the  rest.  His- 
tory attests  what  excellent  results  were  effected  by  the 
Artificers'  Guilds  of  a  former  day.  They  were  the 
means  not  only  of  many  advantages  to  the  workmen, 
but  in  no  small  degree  of  the  advancement  of  art,  as 
numerous  monuments  remain  to  prove.  Such  associa- 
tions should  be  adapted  to  the  requirements  of  the 
age  in  which  we  live — an  age  of  greater  instruction,  of 
different  customs,  and  of  more  numerous  requirements 
in  daily  life.  It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  there  are 
actually  in  existence  not  a  few  Societies  of  this  nature, 
consisting  either  of  workmen  alone  or  of  workmen  and 
employers  together  ;  but  it  were  greatly  to  be  desired 
that  they  should  multiply  and  become  more  effective. 
We  have  spoken  of  them  more  than  once  ;  but  it  will  be 
well  to  explain  here  how  much  they  are  needed,  to 
show  that  they  exist  by  their  own  right,  and  to  enter 
into  their  organization  and  their  work. 

54.  The  experience  of  his  own  weakness  urges  man  to 
call  in  help  from  without.  We  read  in  the  pages  of  Holy 
Writ :  It  is  better  tliat  tv)o  slioiild  be  together  than  one  ; 

for  they  have  the  advantage  of  their  society.  If  o?ie  fall 
he  shall  be  supported  by  the  other.  Woe  to  him  that  is 
alone,  for  ivhen  he  falleth  he  hath  none  to  lift  him  up.^ 
And  further  :  A  brother  that  is  helped  by  his  brother  is 
like  a  strong  city.]  It  is  this  natural  impulse  which 
unites  men  in  civil  society;  and  it  is  tiiis  also  which  makes 
them  band  themselves  together  in  associations  of  citizen 
with  citizen  ;  associations  which,  it  is  true,  cannot  be 
called  societies  in  the  complete  sense  of  the  word,  but 
which  are  societies  nevertheless. 

55.  These  lesser  societies  and  the  society  which  consti- 
tutes the  State  differ  in  many  things,  because  their  im- 
mediate purpose  and  end  is  different.  Civil  society  ex- 
ists for  the  common  good,  and  therefore  is  concerned 
with  the  interests  of  all  in  general,  and  with  individual 
interests  in  their  due  place  and  proportion.  Hence  it 
is  called  public  society,  because  by  its  means,  as  St. 
Thomas  of  Aquin  says.  Men  communicate  with  one  an- 

*  Bcclesisgt^a  iv.  9,  JO.  t  Proverbs  jviii.  19. 


150  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOK. 

other  in  the  setting  up  of  a  commonwealth*  But  the 
societies  which  are  formed  in  the  bosom  of  the  State 
are  called ^nVa/e,  and  justly  so,  because  their  immediate 
purpose  is  the  private  advantage  of  the  associates.  Noio 
a  private  society,  says  St.  Thomas  again,  is  one  which  is 
formed  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  07it  private  business  ; 
as  tvheu  two  or  three  enter  into  a  partnership  with  the 
vieio  of  trading  i?i  conjunction,  j  Particular  societies, 
then,  although  tliey  exist  within  the  State,  and  are 
each  a  part  of  the  State,  nevertheless  cannot  be  pro- 
hibited by  the  State  absolutely  and  as  such.  For  to 
enter  into  "  society  "  of  this  kind  is  the  natural  right  of 
man;  and  the  State  must  protect  natural  rights, not  de- 
stroy them  ;  and  if  it  forbids  its  citizens  to  form  asso- 
ciations, it  contradicts  the  very  principle  of  its  own  ex- 
istence ;  for  both  they  and  it  exist  in  virtue  of  the  same 
principle,  viz.,  the  natural  propensity  of  man  to  live  in 
society. 

56.  There  are  times,  no  doubt,  when  it  is  right  that  the 
law  should  interfere  to  prevent  association;  as  when  men 
join  together  for  purposes  which  are  evidently  bad,  un- 
just, or  dangerous  to  the  State.  In  such  cases  the  pub- 
lic authority  may  justly  forbid  the  formation  of  asso- 
ciations, and  may  dissolve  them  when  they  already  ex- 
ist. But  every  precaution  should  be  taken  not  to 
violate  the  rights  of  individuals  and  not  to  make  un- 
reasonable regulations  under  the  pretense  of  public 
benefit.  For  laws  only  bind  when  they  are  in  accord- 
ance with  right  reason,  and  therefore  with  the  eternal 
law  of  God.J 

57.  And  here  we  are  reminded  of  the  Confraternities, 
Societies,  and  Religious  Orders,  which  have  arisen  by  the 
Church's  authority  and  the  piety  of  the  Christian  people. 
The  annals  of  every  nation  down  to  our  own  times  testify 
to  what  they  have  done  for  the  human  race.  It  is  indis- 
putable, on  grounds  of  reason  alone,  that  such  associa- 
tions, being  perfectly  blameless  in  their  objects,  have  the 

*  Contra  impugnantes  Dei  cvllum  e(  religionem.  Cap.  II.  +  Ibid. 

XlJuman  law  is  law  only  in  virtue  of  iU  accordance  with  right  reason ;  and 
thiu  it  is  rnanifestthatit  flows  from  theeiemal  taw.  Andinsofaras  itdeviatea 
from  right  reawn  it  is  called  an  vnjust  law  ;  in  siich  case  it  is  not  l"w  at  all, 
b^'t  rather  a  species  of  violence— Si.  Tbomaa  of  Aquin,  Summa  Theological  la 
^  ^.  xclii.  Art.  Ui. 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTER   OF   POPE    LEO   XIII.  151 

sanction  of  the  law  of  nature.  On  their  religious  side 
they  rightly  claim  to  be  responsible  to  the  Church  alone. 
The  administrators  of  the  State,  therefore,  have  no 
rights  over  them,  nor  can  they  claim  any  share  in  their 
management ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  State's  duty  to 
respect  and  cherish  tliem,  and,  if  necessary,  to  defend 
them  from  attack.  It  is  notorious  that  a  very  different 
course  has  been  followed,  more  especially  in  our  own 
times.  In  many  places  the  State  has  laid  violent  hands 
on  these  communities,  and  committed  manifold  injustice 
against  them  ;  it  has  placed  them  under  the  civil  law, 
taken  away  their  rights  as  corporate  bodies,  and  robbed 
them  of  tlieir  property.  In  such  property  the  Clmrch 
had  her  rights,  each  member  of  the  body  had  his  or 
her  rights,  and  there  were  also  the  rights  of  those 
who  had  founded  or  endowed  them  for  a  definite  pur- 
pose, and  of  those  for  whose  benefit  and  assiscance  they 
existed.  Wherefore  We  cannot  refrain  from  complain- 
ing of  such  spoliation  as  unjust  and  fraught  with  evil 
results  ;  and  with  the  more  reason  because,  at  the  very 
time  when  the  law  proclaims  that  association  is  free  to 
all,  We  see  that  Catholic  societies,  however  peaceable 
and  useful,  are  hindered  in  every  way,  whilst  the  utmost 
freedom  is  given  to  men  whose  objects  are  at  once  hurt- 
ful to  Religion  and  dangerous  to  the  State. 

58.  Associations  of  every  kind,  and  especially  those 
of  workingmen,  are  now  far  more  common  than  for- 
merly. In  regard  to  many  of  these  there  is  no  need  at 
present  to  inquire  whence  they  spring,  what  are  their 
objects,  or  what  means  they  use.  But  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  evidence  which  goes  to  prove  that  many  of  these 
societies  are  in  the  hands  of  invisible  leaders,  and  are 
managed  on  principles  far  from  compatible  with  Chris- 
tianity and  the  public  well  being ;  and  that  they  do 
their  best  to  get  into  their  hands  the  whole  field  of 
labor  and  to  force  workmen  either  to  join  them  or  to 
starve.  Under  these  circumstances  Christian  workmen 
must  do  one  of  two  things  :  either  join  Associations  in 
which  their  religion  will  be  exposed  to  peril,  or  form 
associations  among  themselves — unite  their  forces  and 
courageously  shake  off  the  yoke  of  an  unjust  and  in- 
tolerable oppregBJoOi    No  one  who  does  j^ot  wish  to 


152  THE    CONDITIOJN"   OF    LABOR. 

expose  mall's  chief  good  to  extreme  danger  will  hesitate 
to  say  that  the  second  alternative  must  by  all  means  be 
adopted. 

59.  Those  Catholics  are  worthy  of  all  praise — and  there 
are  not  a  few — who,  understanding  what  the  times  re- 
quire, have,  by  various  enterprises  and  experiments, 
endeavored  to  better  the  condition  of  the  working 
people  without  any  sacrifice  of  principle.  They  have 
taken  up  the  cause  of  the  workingman,  and  have  striven 
to  make  both  families  and  individuals  better  off  ;  to 
infuse  the  spirit  of  justice  into  the  mutual  relations  of 
employer  and  employed ;  to  keep  before  the  eyes  of 
both  classes  the  precepts  of  duty  and  the  laws  of  the 
Gospel — that  Gospel  which,  by  inculcating  self-re- 
straint, keeps  men  within  the  bounds  of  moderation,  and 
tends  to  establish  harmony  among  the  divergent  in- 
terests and  various  classes  which  compose  the  State.  It 
is  with  such  ends  in  view  that  We  see  men  of  eminence 
meeting  together  for  discussion,  for  the  promotion  of 
united  action,  and  for  practical  work.  Others,  again, 
strive  to  unite  working  people  of  various  kinds  into 
associations,  help  them  with  their  advice  and  their 
means,  and  enable  them  to  obtain  honest  and  profitable 
work.  The  Bishops,  on  their  part,  bestow  their  ready 
good  will  and  support ;  and  with  their  approval  and 
guidance  many  members  of  the  clergy,  both  secular  and 
regular,  labor  assiduously  on  behalf  of  the  spiritual  and 
mental  interests  of  the  members  of  Associations.  And 
there  are  not  wanting  Catholics  possessed  of  affluence 
who  have,  as  it  were,  cast  in  their  lot  with  the  wage- 
ear.ners,  and  who  have  spent  large  sums  in  founding 
and  widely  spreading  Benefit  and  Insurance  Societies; 
by  means  of  which  the  workingman  may  without  diffi- 
culty acquire  by  his  labor  not  only  many  present  ad- 
vantages, but  also  the  certainty  of  honorable  support 
in  time  to  come.  How  much  this  multiplied  and  earn- 
est activity  has  benefited  the  community  at  large  is 
too  well  known  to  require  Us  to  dwell  upon  it.  We 
find  in  it  the  grounds  of  the  most  cheering  hope  for 
the  future  ;  provided  that  the  Associations  We  have 
described  continue  to  grow  and  spread,  and  are  well 
and  wisely  administered.     Let  the  State  watch  over 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTEB  OF  POPE   LEO  XIII.  153 

these  Societies  of  citizens  united  together  in  the  exer- 
cise of  their  right ;  but  let  it  not  thrust  itself  into  their 
peculiar  concerns  and  their  organization  ;  for  things 
move  and  live  by  the  soul  within  them,  and  they  may 
be  killed  by  the  grasp  of  a  hand  from  without. 

60.  In  order  that  an  Association  may  be  carried  on 
with  unity  of  purpose  and  harmony  of  action,  its  or- 
ganization and  government  must  be  firm  and  wise. 
All  such  Societies,  being  free  to  exist,  have  the  further 
right  to  adopt  such  rules  and  organization  as  may  best 
conduce  to  the  attainment  of  their  objects.  We  do  not 
deem  it  possible  to  enter  into  definite  details  on  the 
subject  of  organization  :  this  must  depend  on  national 
character,  on  practice  and  experience,  on  the  nature 
and  scope  of  the  work  to  be  done,  on  the  magnitude  of 
the  various  trades  and  employments,  and  on  other  cir- 
cumstances of  fact  and  of  time — all  of  which  must  be 
carefully  weighed. 

61.  Speaking  summarily,  we  may  lay  it  down  as  a 
general  and  perpetual  law,  that  Workmen's  Associa- 
tions should  be  so  organized  and  governed  as  to  furnish 
the  best  and  most  suitable  means  for  attaining  what  is 
aimed  at,  that  is  to  say,  for  helping  each  individual 
member  to  better  his  condition  to  the  utmost  in  body, 
mind,  and  property.  It  is  clear  that  they  must  pay 
special  and  principal  attention  to  piety  and  morality, 
and  that  their  internal  discipline  must  be  directed  pre- 
cisely by  these  considerations  ;  otherwise  they  entirely 
lose  their  special  character,  and  come  to  be  very  little 
better  than  those  Societies  which  take  no  account  of 
Religion  at  all.  What  advantage  can  it  be  to  a  Work- 
man to  obtain  by  means  of  a  Society  all  that  he  re- 
quires, and  to  endanger  his  soul  for  want  of  spiritual 
food?  What  doth  it  i)rojit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole 
world  and  suffer  the  loss  of  his  oivn  soul?*  This,  as 
Our  Lord  teaches,  is  the  note  or  character  that  dis- 
tinguishes the  Christian  from  the  heathen.  After  all 
these  things  do  the  heathens  seek.  .  .  .  Seek  ye  first 
the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  justice,  and  all  these 
things  shall  he  added  unto  you.]     Let  our  associations, 

*  St.  Matthew  xvi.  26.  t  St.  Mattbeif  vi.  38,  33. 


154  THE   CONDITION   OF   LABOB. 

then,  look  first  and  before  all  to  God  ;  let  religious  in- 
struction have  therein  a  foremost  place,  each  one  being 
carefully  taught  what  is  his  duty  to  God,  what  to  be- 
lieve, what  to  hope  for,  and  how  to  work  out  his  salva- 
tion ;  and  let  all  be  warned  and  fortified  with  especial 
solicitude  against  wrong  opinions  and  false  teaching. 
Let  the  workingman  be  urged  and  led  to  the  worship 
of  God,  to  the  earnest  practice  of  religion,  and,  among 
other  things,  to  the  sanctification  of  Sundays  and  fes- 
tivals. Let  him  learn  to  reverence  and  love  Holy 
Church,  the  common  Mother  of  us  all  ;  and  so  to  obey 
the  precepts  and  to  frequent  the  Sacraments  of  the 
Church,  those  Sacraments  being  the  means  ordained  by 
God  for  obtaining  forgiveness  of  sin  and  for  leading  a 
holy  life. 

63.  The  foundations  of  the  organization  being  laid 
in  Religion,  we  next  goon  to  determine  the  relations  of 
the  members  one  to  another,  in  order  that  they  may 
live  together  in  concord  and  go  on  prosperously  and 
successfully.  The  offices  and  charges  of  the  Society 
should  be  distributed  for  the  good  of  the  Society  itself, 
and  in  such  manner  that  difference  in  degree  or  position 
should  not  interfere  with  unanimity  and  goodwill. 
Office  bearers  should  be  appointed  with  prudence  and 
discretion,  and  each  one's  charge  should  be  carefully 
marked  out ;  thus  no  member  will  suffer  wrong.  Let 
the  common  funds  be  administered  with  the  strictest 
honesty,  in  such  way  that  a  member  receive  assistance 
in  proportion  to  his  necessities.  The  riglitsand  duties 
of  employers  should  be  the  subject  of  careful  consider- 
ation as  compared  with  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  em- 
ployed. If  it  should  happen  tliat  either  a  master  or  a 
workman  deemed  himself  injured,  nothing  would  b(! 
more  desirable  than  that  there  should  be  a  committee 
composed  of  honest  and  capable  men  of  the  Association 
itself,  whose  duty  it  should  be,  by  the  laM's  of  the  Asso- 
ciation, to  decide  the  dispute.  Among  the  purposes 
of  a  Society  should  be  to  try  to  arrange  for  a  continuous 
supply  of  work  at  all  times  and  seasons  ;  and  to  create 
a  fund  from  which  the  members  may  be  helped  in  their 
necessities,  not  only  in  cases  of  accident,  but  also  iu 
BJQkuess,  old  age,  aod  migfortuue, 


ENCYCLICAL  LETTEB  OF  POPE  LEO  XIU.  155 

63.  Such  rules  and  regulations,  if  obeyed  willingly 
by  all,  will  sufficiently  insure  the  well-being  of  poor 
people;  whilst  such  mutual  Associations  among  Cath- 
olics are  certain  to  be  productive,  in  no  small  degree, 
of  prosperity  to  the  State.  It  is  not  rash  to  conjecture 
the  future  from  the  past.  Age  gives  way  to  age,  but 
the  events  of  one  century  are  wonderfully  like  those  of 
another  ;  for  they  are  directed  by  the  Providence  of 
God,  who  overrules  the  course  of  history  in  accordance 
with  His  purposes  in  creating  the  race  of  man.  We 
are  told  that  it  was  cast  as  a  reproach  on  the  Christians 
of  the  early  ages  of  the  Church,  that  the  greater  num- 
ber of  them  had  to  live  by  begging  or  by  labor.  Yet, 
destitute  as  they  were  of  wealth  and  influence,  they 
ended  by  winning  over  to  their  side  the  favor  of  the 
rich  and  the  good  will  of  the  powerful.  They  showed 
themselves  industrious,  laborious,  and  peaceful,  men  of 
justice,  and,  above  all,  men  of  brotherly  love.  In  the 
presence  of  such  a  life  and  such  an  example  prejudice 
disappeared,  the*  tongue  of  malevolence  was  silenced, 
and  the  lying  traditions  of  ancient  superstition  yielded 
little  by  little  to  Christian  truth. 

64.  At  this  moment  the  condition  of  the  working 
population  is  the  question  of  the  hour  ;  and  nothing 
can  be  of  higher  interest  to  all  classes  of  the  State  than 
that  it  should  be  rightly  and  reasonably  decided.  But 
it  will  be  easy  for  Christian  workingmen  to  decide  it 
right  if  they  form  Associations,  choose  wise  guides,  and 
follow  the  same  path  which  with  so  much  advantage  to 
themselves  and  the  commonwealth  was  trod  by  their 
fathers  before  them.  Prejudice,  it  is  true,  is  mighty, 
and  so  is  the  love  of  money ;  but  if  the  sense  of  what 
is  just  and  right  be  not  destroyed  by  depravity  of  heart, 
their  follow  citizens  are  sure  to  be  won  over  to  a  kindly 
feeling  towards  men  whom  they  see  to  be  so  industrious 
and  so  modest,  who  so  unmistakably  prefer  honesty  to 
lucre,  and  the  sacredness  of  duty  to  all  other  considera- 
tions. 

65.  And  another  great  advantage  would  result  from 
the  state  of  things  We  are  describing  :  there  would  be 
so  much  more  hope  and  possibility  of  recalling  to  a 
sense  of  their  duty  those  workingmen  who  h^ye  eitl^er 


156  THE   CONDITION   OF    LABOE. 

givea  up  their  faith  altogether,  or  whose  lives  are  at 
variance  with  its  precepts.  These  men,  in  most  cases, 
feel  that  thoy  have  been  fooled  by  empty  promises  and 
deceived  by  false  appearances.  They  cannot  but  per- 
ceive that  their  grasping  employers  too  often  treat  them 
with  the  greatest  inhumanity  and  hardly  care  for  them 
beyond  the  profit  their  labor  brings  ;  and  if  they  belong 
to  iin  Association,  it  is  probably  one  in  which  there  ex- 
ists, in  place  of  charity  and  love,  that  intestine  strife 
which  always  accompanies  unresigned  and  irreligious 
poverty.  Broken  in  spirit  and  worn  down  in  body, 
how  many  of  them  would  gladly  free  themselves  from 
this  galling  slavery  !  But  human  respect,  or  the  dread 
of  starvation,  makes  them  afraid  to  take  the  step.  To 
such  as  these  Catholic  Associations  are  of  incalculable 
service,  helping  them  out  of  their  difficulties,  inviting 
them  to  companionship,  and  receiving  the  repentant  to 
a  shelter  in  which  they  may  securely  trust. 

QG.  We  have  now  laid  before  you,  Venerable  Breth- 
ren, who  are  the  persons  and  what  are  the  means,  by 
which  this  most  difficult  question  must  be  solved. 
Every  one  must  put  his  hand  to  the  work  which  falls 
to  his  share,  and  that  at  once  and  immediately,  lest 
the  evil  which  is  already  so  great  may  by  delay  become 
absolutely  beyond  remedy.  Those  who  rule  the  State 
must  use  the  law  and  the  institutions  of  the  country  ; 
masters  and  rich  men  must  remember  their  duty  ;  the 
poor  whose  interests  are  at  stake,  must  make  every 
lawful  and  proper  effort  ;  and  since  Religion  alone,  as 
We  said  at  the  beginning,  can  destroy  the  evil  at  its 
root,  all  men  must  be  persuaded  that  the  primary  thing 
needful  is  to  return  to  real  Christianity,  in  the  absence 
of  which  all  the  plans  and  devices  of  the  wisest  will  be 
of  little  avail. 

67.  As  far  as  regards  the  Church,  its  assistance  will 
never  be  wanting,  be  the  time  or  the  occasion  what  it 
may;  and  it  will  intervene  with  the  greater  effect  in 
proportion  as  its  liberty  of  action  is  the  more  unfet- 
tered :  let  this  be  carefully  noted  by  those  whose  office 
it  is  to  provide  for  the  public  welfare.  Every  minister 
of  holy  Religion  must  throw  into  the  conflict  all  the 
energy  of  his  mind  and  all  the  strength   of  his  endu- 


ENCYCLICAL   LETTER  OF   POPE   LEO  Xm.         IST 

ranee  ;  with  your  authority  Venerable  Brethren,  and 
by  your  example,  tliey  must  never  cease  to  urge  upon 
all  men  of  every  class,  upon  the  high  as  well  as  the 
lowly,  the  Gospel  doctrines  of  Christian  life  ;  by  every 
means  in  their  power  they  must  strive  for  the  good  of 
the  people  ;  and  above  all  they  must  earnestly  cherish 
in  themselves,  and  try  to  arouse  in  others.  Charity,  the 
mistress  and  queen  of  virtues.  For  the  happy  results 
we  all  long  for  must  be  chiefly  brought  about  by  the 
plenteous  outpouring  of  Charity  ;  of  that  true  Christ- 
ian Charity  which  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  whole  Gospel 
law,  which  is  always  ready  to  sacrifice  itself  for  others' 
sake,  and  which  is  man's  surest  antidote  against  worldly 
pride  and  immoderate  love  of  self  ;  that  Charity 
whose  office  is  described  and  whose  Godlike  features 
are  drawn  by  the  Apostle  St.  Paul  in  these  words  : 
Charity  is  patient,  is  kind  .  .  .  seeketh  not  her 
own  .  .  .  suffereth  all  things  .  .  .  endureth 
all  things.* 

68.  On  each  one  of  you,  Venerable  Brethren,  and  on 
your  Clergy  and  people,  as  an  earnest  of  God's  mercy 
and  a  mark  of  our  affection.  We  lovingly  in  the  Lord 
bestow  the  Apostolic  Benediction. 

Given  at  St.   Peter's,  in  Kome,  the  fifteenth  day  of 
May,  1891,  the  fourteenth  year  of  Our  Pontificate. 

LEO  XIIL,  POPE. 


•  I  Corinthians  xiii.  4-7. 


n  ^ -! , 

University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17  •  Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library  from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    000  604  161     0 


